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THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 
AN INTERPRETATION 



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THOMPSON'S 
THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 

AN INTERPRETATION 



BY 

FRANCIS P. Le BUFFE, S. J. 

PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, 

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY 

GRADUATE SCHOOL 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1922 

All rights reserved 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 






Copyright, 1921, 1922 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1922. 



JUL 19 1922 

©ci.Ar>74n70 



TO 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 

THAT HIS PURSUIT OF OUR SOULS 

MAY BE SWIFT AND BRIEF 



PREFACE 

This little volume is offered as an interpretation 
of a poem widely read wherever the English tongue 
is spoken. The author's one aim has been to attempt 
to clarify obscure passages and to give all passages 
the atmosphere that is required for them. He has 
felt for years that the various quotations from sacred 
Scripture not only bring added light and pleasure to 
the understanding of the poem, so instinct with in- 
vigorating thought, but that they are necessarily de- 
manded for even a superficial attainment of Thomp- 
son's thought. The whole poem is vibrant with 
spirituality; and anyone who misses this, is thereby 
hopelessly out of harmony with the whole theme. 

The author wishes to caution the reader that he 
has no intention of asserting that Thompson had 
such or such definite passages of Scripture or of 
other authors in view. Such passages are offered as 
illuminative of the poem, not necessarily as sources. 



X PREFACE 

Lastly the author wishes to express his indebted- 
ness to his many Jesuit brethren who have so un- 
selfishly aided him by encouragement, cooperation, 
and constructive advice in this work. 

To this school edition other poems have been added 
without commentary, that these may afford both 
teacher and pupil an opportunity to see other aspects 
of our poet's work. 

Francis P. LeBuffe, S. J. 
fordham u.mversity, 
Feast of SS. Simon and Jude, 1920. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Biography xv 

Introductory Essay , xxiii 

The Hound of Heaven 1 

Additional Poems 9 

Daisy 9 

Poppy 13 

The Making of Viola 17 

Little Jesus 22 

LiLiUM Regis 25 

To A Snowflake 27 

The Kingdom of God 29 

Commentary on The Hound of Heaven . . . . 31 

Analysis 33 

Notes 35 



BIOGEAPHT 

In Preston, a town of Lancashire, England, on 
December 16, 1859, there was born to Dr. Charles 
Thompson and Mary Morton, his wife, a son, Fran- 
cis Joseph. The child early showed those traits 
that plainly marked his life. Physically a weakling, 
the shy, unusual boy was to grow into the frail, slim 
figure of a man to whom the world of unseen reali- 
ties and visioned fancies and untainted ideals was 
more real than the world which spread its crude ob- 
jects before his senses. He himself obeyed by in- 
stinct his own command: "Turn but a stone and 
start an angeFs wing." He saw beneath and behind 
the objects which his senses presented before him. 

When eleven years old, he was sent to the college 
at Ushaw, near Durham, as he was thought to show 
signs of a priestly vocation. Here he spent seven 
years, finally returning home without passing on 
to the seminary, because his teachers felt that he 

xiii 



XIV BIOGRAPHY 

evidenced no real vocation. His dreamy way, his 
irregularity, his apparent indolence rightly induced 
this decision. Yet his was the indolence, not of the 
loafer, but of one who dreams high dreams and finds 
the meshes of material things a clog to his reaching 
spirit. Of his moral character his teachers spoke 
highly. He was known to be an unusually docile, 
obedient, and devout boy, to whom the ritual and 
the liturgy of the Church were a source of great joy. 
From childhood up he was noted for his love of 
solid reading and might be found buried in good 
literature at almost any time. 

Little realizing the type of boy he was dealing 
with, good Dr. Thompson decided that his son was 
to study medicine and so, for six years at Owens 
College, Manchester, and at Glasgow, the foredoomed 
experiment was made with disastrous results. Fran- 
cis systematically absented himself from lectures, 
failed in his examinations, and incidentally picked 
up the opium habit, which nearly brought him to 
ruin. Rudderless on the sea of life, he began to 
drift. He left home suddenly in 1885 at the age 
of twenty-six, and for three years was lost in Lon- 
don's slums. Here he duplicated De Quincey's ex- 



BIOGRAPHY XV 

periences in many ways, leading a roving, starving 
Kfe, picking up odd jobs, even boot-blacking, selling 
matches, and holding horses. Still in love with let- 
ters, he frequented the public library, until he was 
forbidden entrance because of his unkempt, ragged 
condition. Even in his beggared life, the outcast 
said his prayers at night, nor ever, either then or in 
after years, lost his reverence for the things of God 
or his passionate attachment to his Catholic faith. 

Seeing a few copies of the Catholic magazine 
Merry England, he sent to its editor, Wilfrid Mey- 
nell, his essay "Paganism, Old and New" and a few 
poems, among which was the "Passion of Mary." 
Appreciating the value of the work, Meynell at once 
searched out the poet and, finding him at length, 
drew him from his pitiable surroundings. Francis 
had now a friend who stood by him until the end. 
Treatment in a hospital broke for a time the opium 
habit. This was in 1888. 

From this time on, Thompson gave himself to 
literary work. He published "Poems" in 1893, 
"Sister Songs" in 1895, "New Poems" in 1897. He 
wrote as a reviewer, critic, and essayist for maga- 
zines, notably Merry England, Academy, Athemjeiim, 



XVI BIOaRAPHY 

and was well-poised, impersonal, and yet frank in 
his e-iticisms. 

He became quite friendly with the Franciscans at 
Pantasaph and "From the Mght of Foreboding" 
preserves some of the mystical intuitions which made 
his spirit so akin to these "bearded counsellors of 
God." To his friendship with the Jesuits of Farm 
Street, London, is due his "Life of St. Ignatius," 
which is a splendid piece of literature. 

His health was never good, sapped as his body 
was by tuberculosis and the effects of opium. De- 
cline came on him rapidly and death found him in 
the hospital of the Sisters of St. John and St. 
Elizabeth in London. He died November 13, 1907. 

As a man, Thompson had the abnormal psycho- 
logical traits of a genius. Because of them he was 
unfitted for the ordinary hum-drum ways of man. 
Dilatory, unpunctual, unkempt in attire and toilet, 
he yet had the courtesy, the refinement, and the 
easily-read humility of an inwardly Christian gentle- 
man, and these caught the attention of even the 
casual observer. This was true of him even when he 
tramped London slums. Like most high-strung sen- 
sitive characters, he was shy and ill at ease with those 



BIOGRAPHY XVll 

he chanced to meet, unless, as such individuals are 
wont to do, he sensed instinctively a basic harmony 
of soul and of views. In estimating the character of 
the man we must remember that unusual gifts of 
mind have frequently their offsides and unless one 
has disciplined oneself from earliest youth, one is apt 
to find that these censurable traits become quite a 
source of annoyance to one^s self and one's friends. 
Unfortunately, the growing Thompson was not disci- 
plined and it may remain a question with many 
whether severe restraint would not have crushed and 
broken his temperament. 

As a writer, Francis Thompson is unquestionably 
one of the greatest products of our language. Men 
such as Archer, Traill, Garvin, and Meynell hailed 
his work with admiration. Gilbert Chesterton has 
sounded his praises loudly, and Burne-Jones de- 
clared, "Since GabrieFs ^Blessed DamozeF no mysti- 
cal words have so touched me." Coventry Patmore, 
while rating his poetry high, valued his prose higher 
still, and at his death George Meredith said of him, 
"A true poet, one of the small band." By Canon 
Sheehan and others his genius was ranked second 
only to Shakespeare. 



XVlll BIOGRAPHY 

His work is noted for its richness of thought and 
its luxuriant imagery, which however at times be- 
comes excessive. His poetry is filled with allusions 
to self and to his own song, but it is this extremely 
accurate analysis of self that makes Thompson's ap- 
peal so strong to those whose souls are ever striving 
to reach "deific peaks.'' Unquestionably he is ob- 
scure in places, but frequently it is because he dares 
to voice thoughts that lie apart from words, yet 
thoughts that will arise at his bidding in like-minded 
souls. He speaks indeed an '^alien tongue" to those 
whose ears hearken only to the raucous calls of the 
objects of sense. He is prolific in his use of words 
and was severely censured for coining new ones. 
Here again a fault may be admitted, but some of 
the words he coined have since been accepted by 
many who first raised an accusing finger. He thus 
enriched the language, and by employing many words 
not in daily use, helped combat the poverty of our 
daily tongue. 

One of the outstanding qualities of his writing is 
its deep religious spirit. Familiar as a true Catholic 
must be with holy things, he shows a "devout 
audacity." He himseli attributes to "the natural 



BIOGRAPHY XIX 

temper of my Catholic training in a simple provin- 
cial home/' the spirit of religion in such poems as 
"The Making of Viola," "The Judgment in Hea- 
ven/' "The Hound of Heaven/' "Little Jesus/' "The 
Dread of Height/' "Contemplation/' etc. His 
"Hound of Heaven" ranks as one of the greatest, if 
not the greatest, of religious odes in the English lan- 
guage. In single editions it has reached quite two 
hundred thousand copies, and of it Mr. Garvin rightly 
wrote that it is "Thompson's high-water mark for 
unimaginable beauty and tremendous import — ^the 
most wonderful lyric in the language." Thompson 
was sure of his own survival (compare lines quoted 
on p. 82), and though this was scant comfort in a 
life on which there was so much "shade of His hand 
outstretched caressingly/' it kept him true to his 
work and his ideals in writing. We might well say 
of him what he said of Shelley, noting that Thomp- 
son is rightly ranked above a man who was a stran- 
ger to our poet's deepest thoughts : "The universe 
is his box of toys. He dabbles his hands in the 
sunset. He is gold-dusty with stumbling amid the 
stars. . . . He dances in and out of the gates of 
heaven." Indeed, one of Thompson's chief claims 



XX BIOGRAPHY 

to greatness as an artist is that he is the interpreter 
of the soul in its noblest efforts to reach up to God. 
A strange man, yes, with a complex character, but 
one who saw clearly and surely the eternal truths 
of man's existence, we may feel sure that we may one 
day hearken to his advice — "Look for me in the 
nurseries of Heaven." 



INTEODUCTOEY ESSAY 

To all who read the history of mankind with 
unsoiled eyes the one outstanding and outdistancing 
fact is the insistent love of God. This love was 
first shown in the building of this world-home for 
man, so beautiful and so plural in its appeal to every 
sense of its rational lord. Man was to enjoy it 
without labor, reaping where he had not sown. This 
was God's first manifestation of love, yet man's tru- 
ancy came speedily. Adam and Eve threw away 
God's love for them that they might hearken to a 
false promise of a share in self-sufficing knowledge. 
Forsaken and spurned by them, God would not have 
it so. Man, as any other foolish, petulant child, 
must be saved from his own folly. Man would make 
away from God, and God determined to pursue man 
and bring him back. This pursuit of the human 
race by God is described by St. John Chrysostom 
(Homily 5 on the Epistle to the Hebrews ii, 14-16) : 



XXiiJ^. INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 



"Paul wishing to show the great kindness of God 
towards man^ and the Love which He had for the 
human race, after saying: Torasmuch then as the 
children were partakers of blood and flesh, He also 
Himself likewise took part of the same' (ii, 14), 
follows up the subject in this passage. For do not 
regard lightly what is spoken, nor think this merely 
a slight matter, His taking on Him our flesh. He 
granted not this to Angels ; ^For verily He taketh not 
hold of Angels, but of the seed of Abraham.' What 
is it that he saith ? He took not on Him an Angel's 
nature, but man's. But what is 'He taketh hold of?' 
He did not (he means) grasp that nature, which 
belongs to Angels, but ours. But why did he not 
say, 'He took on Him,' but used this expression, 'He 
taketh hold of?' It is derived from the figure of 
persons pursuing those who turn away from them, 
and doing everything to overtake them as they flee, 
and to take hold of them as they are bounding away. 
For when hunlan nature was fleeing from Him, and 
fleeing far away (for we 'were far off' — Ephesians 
ii, 13), He pursued after and overtook us. He 
showed that He has done this only out of kindness 
and love and tender care." 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY XXiii 

This pursuit was long, and man had found his 
way down to the utter depths of the most degrading 
paganism, and seemed almost successful in his flight 
from God. This, St. Paul places before our eyes in 
words that picture with unrivalled force those god- 
less men : "So that they are inexcusable, because that, 
when they knew God, they have not glorified Him as 
God, or given thanks, but became vain in their 
thoughts and their foolish heart was darkened. For 
professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 
and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God 
into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, 
and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts, and of creep- 
ing things. Wherefore God gave them up to the 
desires of their heart, unto uncleanness to dishonor 
their own bodies among themselves, who changed the 
truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served 
the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed 
forever. Amen. For this cause God delivered them 
up to shameful affections . . . and as they liked not 
to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them 
to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are 
not convenient" (Rom. i, 20-28). It was, then, 
when man had all but become a beast, "when the 



XXIV INTRODUCTORY ElSSAY 

fulness of the time was come, God sent His Son, 
made of a woman, made under the law, that He 
might redeem them who were under the law, that we 
might receive the adoption of sons" (Galatians iv, 
4-5), "and the Word was made flesh and dwelt 
among us . . . and of His fulness we all have re- 
ceived and grace for grace'' (St. John i, 14, 16). 
Hope was relighted in the human heart, and out of 
the sodden ashes of paganism arose the serried ranks 
of martyrs and virgins and holy witnesses to the 
love and kindliness of God to fallen, fleeing man. 
This racial pursuit of God is again, in a very spe- 
cial way, manifested in the history of the Jews, the 
chosen people of God under the older dispensation. 
Having selected them from out the nations of the 
world at the time He called Abraham from Ur.of 
the Chaldeans, God further showed His loving care, 
for it was He "who smote Egypt with their first 
born . . . who brought out Israel from among them 
. . . with a mighty hand and with a stretched out 
arm . . . and slew strong kings . . . and He gave 
their land for an inheritance'^ (Psalm cxxxv, 10-21). 
But the people would not have God alone, for "they 
made also a calf in Horeb and they adored the 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY XXV 

graven thing^' (Psalm cv^ 19). Yet not for that 
did God abandon Israel to his witlessness. "As an 
eagle enticing her young to fly, and hovering over 
them. He spread His wings, and hath taken him and 
carried him on His shoulders. The Lord alone was 
his leader and there was no strange god with him. 
He set him upon high land that he might eat the 
fruits of the fields, that he might suck honey out of 
the rock and oil out of the hardest stone, butter of 
the herd and milk of the sheep with the fat of the 
lambs, and of the rams of the breed of Basan, and 
goats with the marrow of wheat, and might drink 
the purest blood of the grape" (Deuteronomy xxxii, 
11-14). Surely Israel was a petted child, yet, with 
wonted petulancy, he balked his Father's plans, for 
"the beloved grew fat and kicked : he grew fat, and 
thick and gross, he forsook God who made him and 
departed from God his Saviour. They provoked Him 
by strange gods and stirred Him up to anger with 
their abominations" (Deuteronomy xxxii, 15-16). 
This, too, was their continued way of waywardness 
until the words of aging Josue came true : "But if 
you will embrace the errors of these nations that 
dwell among you and make marriages with them and 



XXVI INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 

join friendships; know ye for a certainty that the 
Lord your God will not destroy them before your 
face, but they shall be a pit and a snare in your 
way, and a stumbling-block at your side, and stakes 
in your eyes, till He take you away and destroy you 
from off this excellent land, which He hath given 
you" (Josue xxiii, 12-13). The day did come when 
the exiled Jews sobbed out in their sorrow (Psalm 
cxxxvi, 1-4) : 

"Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, 

When we remembered Sion. 
On the willows in the midst thereof 

We hung up our instruments; 
For there they that led us into captivity, required of us 

The words of songs; 
And they that carried us away, said: 

'Sing ye to us a hymn of the songs of Sion.* 
How shall we sing the song of the Lord 

In a land that is strange?" 

Again and again they were won back to God's 
friendship, but again and yet again went aside after 
other loves, and the whole history of that strange, 
stiff-necked folk is one of the persistency of God's 
love, which would not brook refusal. Not even when 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY XXVii 

the Master of the vineyard sent His only Son to 
them, would they give Him their undivided hearts, 
for that same Son was forced to cry (St. Matthew 
^xiii, 37) : "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest 
the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, 
how often would I have gathered together thy chil- 
dren as the hen doth gather her chickens under her 
wings, and thou wouldst not!" But despite it all, 
on Good Friday morning they renounced their al- 
legiance to God, who for generations had been their 
king; for, hurling back Pilate's taunt, the chief 
priests answered : "We have no king but Caesar" ( St. 
John xix, 15). After this rejection, would God con- 
tinue the pursuit? Did infinite Goodness find yet 
more patience with this ungrateful child ? Yes, even 
after they had murdered their Messiah, "the Hope 
of Israel," "The Desire of the everlasting hills," for 
twelve long years the Apostles labored unitedly in 
Jerusalem to win this faithless folk back to God. 
Xor did the pursuit end there; for we know that 
God's love will pursue them until the great day of 
reckoning, before which the "remnant of the house 
of Israel" is to be saved. 

This pursuit of the whole mankind and of the 



XXVlll INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 

Jewish folk in particular is but a larger manifesta- 
tion of God's way with each individual soul. "Man 
is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our 
Lord, and by this means to save his soul; and the 
other things on the face of the earth were created 
for man's sake, and in order to aid him in the prose- 
cution of the end for which he was created" (Spir- 
itual Exercises of St. Ignatius). Hence the com- 
mand: "Hear, Israel, the Lord, our God, is one 
Lord. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy 
whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy 
whole strength" (Deuteronomy vi, 4-5), for "I am 
the Lord thy God. . . . Thou shalt not have strange 
gods before Me. . . . Thou shalt not adore them, 
nor serve them: I am the Lord thy God, mighty, 
jealous" (Exodus xx, 2-5). But each soul is wont 
to be rebellious and deems it hard to find in God its 
all of love and in subjection to Him its highest free- 
dom. "A vain man is lifted up into pride and 
thinketh himself born free like a wild ass's colt" 
(Job xi, 12). Mostly our rebellion is but the igno- 
rant querulousness of a peevish child, simply a blind 
groping of the human heart among created things 
after that "unlimited good" which alone will satisfy 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY XXIX 

it adequately. Sometimes, however, there is a deal 
of conviction within us that it is hard for us to kick 
against the goad, for we realize, to our own increas- 
ing discomfiture, that by not yielding we are hurting 
our own real good. Rarely is our rebellion an open 
rejection of God's authority. Yet there are men 
that are such rebels, and of each of them it can truly 
be said : "His pride and his arrogancy and his indig- 
nation is more than his strength" (Isaias xvi, 6), 
for this is the kind of pride which ultimately re- 
fuses to be conquered by God and leads direct to 
eternal wreckage of all that is truly noble in man. 
It is this endeavor of the soul to make away from 
God and God's pursuit that forms the theme of this 
poem. Whether this poem is autobiographical or 
not, seems largely a superfluous academic question. 
Undoubtedly it is, at least in broad outlines, but it 
seems to add little inward worth to the interpreta- 
tion to know that this line tallies with a certain inci- 
dent in Thompson's life and that line with another. 
This "specialist" treatment makes little for the gen- 
eral appeal. What is of interest and what secures 
the widest appeal for the poem is that it is auto- 
biographical of "a" soul, in aspects common to it 



XXX INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 

and to all mankind, and therefore autobiographical of 
every soul, for it is regrettably true that every soul 
of every child of Adam, with the single and signal 
exception of Mary, the Mother of God, has fought 
with varying intensity this fight against its "Tre- 
mendous Lover." We have all "fled Him, down the 
nights and down the days/' and the poem smites on 
our souls as did the handwriting on Balthasar's wall. 
As we read and ponder, there resound within our 
hearts the accusing words of the prophet Nathan to 
King David: "Thou art the man." Whether an- 
thologists refuse to class this poem as a "great poem" 
or not, it is more widely read and will be more widely 
read than many that measure up to an arbitrary yard- 
stick. Against its poignant throbbings we lay our 
own hearts "to beat and share commingling heat"; 
and it is quite safe to say that many a prayer has 
been breathed and many a heart moved to take at 
least initial steps to end its flight from God, as line 
after line awakened memories that burned and seared 
the soul unto its own healing. Like the Psalms of 
David, though inevitably with far less authority and 
consequent appeal, it reads each human heart for its 
own self and makes plain to it the meaning of those 
ceaseless cravings which, if misconstrued, torture our 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY XXXI 

hearts as tney pilgrimage to our Father's home. 
Thompson would tell us that all yearnings of the 
soul can be met by God alone, and that it is the 
sheerest folly to try to ease that fundamental search 
for love, coextensive with our being, save in the way 
that God will have it. God wants our love; and 
God will have it, and have it in the way He Himself 
desires — or else the soul-hunger will never be eased. 
With some this pursuit of God is swift and decisive; 
and so a Magdalene becomes at once a woman of 
•aintliest ways, a Saul stands forth as the world- 
grasping Paul, to whom "to live is Christ, and to 
die is gain" (Philippians 1, 21), a Spanish cavalier 
is hurled by a cannon ball into the saintliness of 
Ignatius. With others God's task is harder, the 
pursuit is longer, and it is only when God has time 
and time again bruised their hearts and torn their 
souls wide asunder and plucked thereout each object 
that was loved, that they yield to Him and in that 
yielding find surcease of pain and plenitude of sanc- 
tifying love and that peace which the world cannot 
give and is equally impotent to take away, "the peace 
of God, which surpasseth all understanding" (Philip- 
pians iv, 7). 

Thompson is not alone in his endeavor to show 



XXXll INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 

the futility of trying to escape from God. Holy 
Scripture, with all the force of God's own authority, 
frequently insists on this thought. The whole idea 
is summed up strikingly in our Lord's simple meta- 
phor of the Good Shepherd: "I am the Good Shep- 
herd. The good shepherd giveth his life for his 
sheep" (St. John x, 11), for "if he shall lose one of 
them, doth he not leave the ninety-nine in the desert 
and go after that which was lost, until he find it?" 
(St. Luke XV, 4). Elsewhere in Holy Scripture we 
find similar thoughts. The Royal Psalmist (Psalm 
cxxxviii, 7-12) speaks from the side of God's omni- 
presence and His conserving love, while Thompson 
presents God's pursuit after a fleeing, erring soul 
that He wills to bring back to His love. The Psalm- 
ist view is one of repose, Thompson's one of intens- 
est activity: 
"Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? 

Or whither shall I flee from Thy face? 
If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there; 

If I descend into hell, Thou art present. 
If I take my wings early in the morning 

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 
Even there also shall Thy hand lead me 

And Thy right hand shall hold me. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY XXXlli 

And I said: Perhaps darkness shall cover me, 
And night shall be my light in my pleasures. 

But darkness shall not be dark to Thee, 
And night shall be light as the day; 

The darkness thereof, and the light thereof are alike to 
Thee." 

Again holy Job is answered by Sophar the Naama- 
thite (Job xi, 7-10) : 

"Peradventure thou wilt comprehend the steps of God, 
And wilt find out the Almighty perfectly? 
He is higher than heaven, and what wilt thou do? 

He is deeper than hell, and how wilt thou know? 
The measure of Him is longer than the earth, 

And broader than the sea. 
If He shall overturn all things, or shall press them to- 
gether, 
Who shall contradict Him?" 

In both citations the holy writers take a static 
view of God's relation to the soul, while Thompson's 
entire concept is dynamic. The whole story of Saul, 
unhorsed on the road to Damascus, approximates 
more nearly the present theme. "And as he went on 
his journey, it came to pass that he drew nigh to 
Damascus and suddenly a light from heaven shined 



XXXIV INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 

round about him^ and falling on the ground, he 
heard a voice saying to him : Saul, Saul, why per- 
secutest thou me? Who said: Who art thou. Lord? 
And He: I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. It is 
hard for thee to kick against the goad. And he 
trembling and astonished, said : Lord, what wilt thou 
have me to do?" (i^cts ix, 3-6). Saul had kicked 
against the goad by gazing with blinded eyes on the 
miracles of the early Church and the wondrous sanc- 
tity of her first-born children and by turning a deaf 
ear to Stephen's inspired words. But now One 
greater than he has hurled him to the ground, and 
from the earth rises the new man, "Paul, a servant 
of Jesus Christ, called to be _ an apostle, separated 
unto the gospel of God" (Eomans i, 1) ; "from hence- 
forth let no man be troublesome to me : for I bear 
the brand-marks of the Lord Jesus in my body" 
(Galatians vi, 17). From that time on Paul was 
God's man wholly and entirely. 

Outside the inspired pages of Holy Scripture we 
find other songs to tell us of this flight. In shorter 
compass the poet archbishop, Richard Chenevix 
Trench, briefly yet strongly pictures the inevitable 
outcome of such vagrancy: 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY XXXV 

"If there had anywhere appeared in space 
Another place of refuge where to flee, 
My soul had found a refuge in that place 
And not in Thee. 

But only when I found in earth and air 
And heaven and hell that such could nowhere be, 
That I could not flee from Thee anywhere 
I fled to Thee." 

Again with lesser note Father Tabb has sung in one 
of his famous quatrains, "The Wanderer" : 

"For one astray, behold 

The Master, leaves the ninety and the nine, 
Nor rest till, love-controlled, 

The Discord moves in Harmony divine. 

Greater than either of these is the strong passage 
in "Idylls of the King/' where, in "The Holy Grail," 
Sir Percivale tells the monk Ambrosius of his quest. 
The parting tournament has been held and Percivale 
had shown unwonted strength of arm, and then the 
morrow came and he went forth with his fellow- 
knights to seek the Holy Grail: 

"And I was lifted up in heart, and thought 
Of all my late-shown prowess in the lists, 



XXXVl INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 

How my strong lance had beaten down the knights, 
So many and famous names; and never yet 
Had heaven appear'd so blue, nor earth so green, 
For all my blood danced in me, and I knew 
That I should light upon the Holy Grail. 

Thereafter the dark warning of our King, 

That most of us would follow wandering fires, 

Came like a driving gloom across my mind. 

Then every evil word I had spoken once. 

And every evil thought I had thought of old, 

And every evil deed I ever did, 

Awoke and cried, 'This Quest is not for thee.* 

And lifting up mine eyes, I found myself 

Alone, and in a land of sand and thorns, 

And I was thirsty even unto death ; 

And I, too, cried, 'This Quest is not for thee.' 

And on I rode, and when I thought my thirst 
Would slay me, saw deep lawns, and then a brook. 
With one sharp rapid, where the crisping white 
Play'd ever back upon the sloping wave, 
And took both ear and eye; and o'er the brook 
Were apple-trees, and apples by the brook 
Fallen, and on the lawns. 'I will rest here/ 
I said, 'I am not worthy of the Quest;' 
But even while I drank the brook, and ate 
The goodly apples, all these things at once 
Fell into dust, and I was left alone. 
And thirsting, in a land of sand and thorns. 



INTRODUCTORY EiiSAY XXXVll 

And then behold a woman at a door 
Spinning; and fair the house whereby she sat, 
And kind the woman's eyes and innocent, 
And all her bearing gracious; and she rose 
Opening her arms to meet me, as who should say, 
'Rest here;' but when I touched her, lo! she, too. 
Fell into dust and nothing, and the house 
Became no better than a broken shed. 
And in it a dead babe; and also this 
Fell into dust, and I was left alone. 

And on I rode, and greater was my thirst. 
Then flash'd a yellow gleam across the world, 
And where it smote the ploughshare in the field, 
The ploughman left his ploughing, and fell down 
Before it; where it glitter'd on her pail. 
The milkmaid left her milking, and fell down 
Before it, and I knew not why, but thought 
'The sun is rising,' tho' the sun had risen. 
Then was I ware of one that on me moved 
In golden armor with a crown of gold 
About a casque all jewels; and his horse 
In golden armor jewell'd everywhere: 
And on the splendor came, flashing me blind; 
And seem'd to me the Lord of all the world. 
Being so huge. But when I thought he meant 
To crush me, moving on me, lo ! he, too, 
Open'd his arms to embrace me as he came. 
And up I went and touch'd him, and he, too. 



XXXVlli INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 

Fell into dust, and I was left alone 

And wearying in a land of sand and thorns. 

And I rode on and found a mighty hill, 

And on the top, a city wall'd: the spires 

Priek'd with incredible pinnacles into heaven. 

And by the gateway stirr'd a crowd ; and these 

Cried to me climbing, 'Welcome, Percivale! 

Thou mightiest and thou purest among men!' 

And glad was I and clomb, but found at top 

No man, nor any voice. And thence I past 

Far thro' a ruinous city, and I saw 

That man had once dwelt there; but there I found 

Only one man of an exceeding age. 

'Where is that goodly company,' said I, 

'That so cried out upon me' and he had 

Scarce any voice to answer, and yet gasp'd, 

'Whence and what art thou?' and even as he spoke 

Fell into dust, and disappear'd, and I 

Was left alone once more, and cried in grief, 

*Lo, if I find the Holy Grail itself 

And touch it, it will crumble into dust.' 

And thence I dropt into a lowly vale. 

Low as the hill was high, and where the vale 

Was lowest, found a chapel and thereby 

A holy hermit in a hermitage. 

To whom I told my phantoms, and he said: 

'0 son, thou hast not true humility, 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY XXXIX 

The highest virtue, mother of them all; 
For when the Lord of all things made Himself 
Naked of glory for His mortal change, 
"Take thou my robe," she said, "for all is thine," 
And all her form shone forth with sudden light 
So that the angels were amazed, and she 
Follow'd him down, and like a flying star 
Led on the gray-hair'd wisdom of the east; 
But her thou hast not known: for what is this 
Thou thoughtest of thy prowess and thy sins? 
Thou hast not lost thyself to save thyself 
As Galahad.' " 

Lack of lowliness of mind has caused all things 
to fade upon his touch and has robbed them of the 
little power they rightfully had to give some com- 
fort to his soul. Undue love of self works havoc in 
the soul, nor is the Holy Grail seen by Percivale, 
until Galahad — 

"Drew me, with power upon me, till I grew 
One with him to believe as he believed." 

Organically blending throughout the poem with 
this dominant idea of God's persistency in "hound- 
ing" the soul not to death but to life is the thought 
that God afflicts man in order to bring him back to 
Him. This is written large on almost every page of 



Xl INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 

Scripture, yet nowhere perhaps more clearly or more 
poignantly than in the threnody of Jeremias (La- 
mentations iii, 1-17, 22-23, 31-33) : 

"I am the man that see my poverty 

By the rod of His indignation. 
He hath led me and brought me into darkness, 

And not into light. 
Only against me He hath turned and turned again 

His hand all the day. 
My skin and my flesh He hath made old, 

He hath broken my bones. 
He hath built round about me, and He hath compassed m,e 

With gall and labor. 
He hath set me in dark places 

As those that are dead forever. 
He hath built against me round about that I may not 
get out; 

He hath made my fetters heavy. 
Yea, and when I cry and entreat, 

He hath shut out my prayer. 
He hath shut up ray w^ay with square stones, 

He hath turned my paths upside dov^n. 
He is become to me as a bear lying in wait. 

As a lion in secret places. 
He hath turned aside my paths and broken me in pieces. 

He hath made me desolate. 
He hath bent His bow and set me 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY xli 

As a mark for His arrows, 
lie hath shot into my veins 

The daughters of His quiver. 
I am made a derision to all ray people, 

Their song all the day long. 
He hath filled me with bitterness, 

He hath inebriated me with wormwood. 
And He hath broken my teeth one by one, 

He hath fed me with ashes. 
And my soul is removed far oflF from peace; 

I have forgotten good things. 

The mercies of the Lord, that we are not consumed; 

Because his commiserations have not failed. 
They are new every morning; 

Great is Thy faithfulness. 

For the Lord will not cast off 

Forever. 
For if He will cast off, He will also have mercy 

According to the multitude of His mercies. 
For He hath not willingly afflicted 

Nor cast off the children of men." 

There the whole story is told as it ought to be 
told. Sorrow and pain and disappointment are sent 
by God for one's good, and when they are recognized 
as so sent, they lead the soul back to God's welcom- 



Xlii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 

ing arms. It is a strong grace from God when we 
can see that all our trials come upon us because He 
wills it so, that they are all "shade of His hand out- 
stretched caressingly'^ ; a blessed hour when with 
true humility we recognize and admit our wayward- 
ness and yield — and then hear the welcome : "Eise, 
clasp my hand and come." 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 
AN INTERPRETATION 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 

I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days; 

I fled Him, down the arches of the years ; 
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways 

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears 
I hid from Him, and under running laughter. 5 
Up vistaed hopes, I sped; 
And shot, precipitated 
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, 

From those strong Feet that followed, followed 
after. 
But with unhurrying chase, 10 

And unperturbed pace, 
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy. 
They beat — and a Voice beat 
More instant than the Feet — 
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me." is 

I pleaded, outlaw-wise. 
By many a hearted casement, curtained red, 

1 



2 THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 

Trellised with intertwining charities; 
(For, though I knew His love Who followed, 

Yet was I sore adread 20 

Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside) 
But, if one little casement parted wide, 

The gust of His approach would clash it to. 
Fear wist not. to evade as Love wist to pursue. 
Across the margent of the world I fled, 25 

And troubled the gold gateways of the stars, 
Smiting for shelter on their clanged bars; 
Fretted Iq-jdulcet jars 
And silvern chatter the pale ports 0' the moon. 
I said to dawn:. Be sudden — to eve: Be soon; 30 
I j With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over 

From this tremendous Lover ! 
Float thy vague, veil about me, lest He see ! 

I tempted all His servitors, but to find 
My own betrayal in their constancy, as 

In faith to Him their fickleness to me, 

Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit. 
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue; 
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind. 

But whether they swept, smoothly fleet, 40 
The long savannahs of the blue ; 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 3 

Or whether. Thunder-driven, 
They clanged His chariot ^thwart a heaven, 
Plashy v^^ith flying" lightnings round the spurn o' 
their feet: — 
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue. 45 
Still with unhurrying chase, . : .. 

And unperturbed pace, . '" 

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy. 
Came on the following Feet, 
And a Voice above their beat— so 

"Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me." 

I sought no more that after which I strayed. 

In face of man or maid; 
But still within the little children's eyes 

Seems something, something that replies, ss 
They at least are for me, surely for me! 
I turned me to them very wistfully; 
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair 

With dawning answers there, 
Their angel plucked' them from me by the hair. 60 
"Come then, ye other children, Nature's — share 
With me" (said I) "your delicate fellowship; 

Let me greet you lip to lip. 



4 THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 

Let me twine with you caresses, 

Wantoning 65 

With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses, 

Banqueting 
With her in her wind-walled palace, 
Underneath her azured dais, 
Quaffing, as your taintless way is, 70 

From a chalice 
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring." 

So it was done: 
I in their delicate fellowship was one — 
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies. 75 

I knew all the swift importings 
On the wilful face of skies; 
I knew how the clouds arise 
Spumed of the wild sea-snortings ; 

All that's born or dies 80 

Eose and drooped with — made them shapers 
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine — 
With them joyed and was bereaven. 
I was heavy with the even, 
When she lit her glimmering tapers 8s 

Round the day's dead sanctities. 
I laughed in the morning's eyes. 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 5 

I triumphed and I saddened with all weather, 

Heaven and I wept together, 
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine; 90 
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart 
I laid my own to beat, 
And share commingling heat; 
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart. 
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's gray cheek. 
For, ah ! we know not what each other says, 96 

These things and I; in sound I speak — 
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences. 
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth; 

Let her, if she would owe me, 100 

Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me 

The breasts 0' her tenderness : 

Never did any milk of hers once bless 

My thirsting mouth. 

Nigh and nigh draws the chase, 105 

With unperturbed pace. 
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, 
And past those noised Feet 
A Voice comes yet more fleet — 
"Lo ! naught contents thee, who content's t not 
Me." no 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 



Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke. 

My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me, 

And smitten me to my knee; 

I am defenceless utterly. 

I slept, methinks, and woke us 

And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep. 
In the rash lustihead of my young powers, 

I shook the pillaring hours 
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears, 
T stand amid the dust o' the mounded years — 120 
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap. 
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke. 
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream. 

Yea, faileth now even dream 
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist; 125 

Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist 
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist. 
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account 
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed. 

Ah! is Thy love indeed " 130 

A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed. 
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount? 

Ah ! must — 

Designer Infinite! — 



THE HOUND OP HEAVEN 7 

k\v ! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn 
with it? I3S 

My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust; 
And now my heart is as a broken fount, 
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever 

From the dank thoughts that shiver 
Upon the sighful branches of my mind. mo 

Such is; what is to be? 
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind ? 
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds; 
Yet ever and anah a trumpet sounds 
From the hid battlements of Eternity; i4S 

Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then 
Eound the half -glimpsed turrets slowly wash again; 

But not ere him who summoneth 

I first have seen, enwound 
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned; 
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith. isi 
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields 

Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields 

Be dunged with rotten death? 

Now of that long pursuit 155 

Comes on at hand the bruit; 
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea; 

"And is thy earth so marred, 



8 TEE HOUND OF HEAVEN 

Shattered in shard on shard? 
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me ! i6o 

Strange, piteous, futile thing! 
Wherefore should any set thee love apart? 
Seeing none but I make much of naught" (He said), 
"And human love needs human meriting : 

How hast thou merited — 165 

Of all man's clotted clay, the dingiest clot? 

Alack, thou knowest not 
How little worthy of any love thou art! 
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee. 

Save Me, save only Me? 170 

All which I took from thee I did but take, 

Not for thy harms. 
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms. 

All which thy child's mistake 
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: 175 

Rise, clasp My hand, and come." 

Halts by me that footfall: 
Is my gloom, after all, 
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? 
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest ! 180 

I am He Whom thou seekest ! 
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me." 



ADDITIONAL POEMS 
DAISY 

Where the thistle lifts a purple crown 

Six foot out of the turf, 
And the harebell shakes on the windy hill — 

the breath of the distant surf! — 

The hills look over on the South, 

And southward dreams the sea ; 
And with the sea-breeze hand in hand 

Came innocence and she. 

Where ^mid the gorse the raspberry 

Eed for the gatherer springs, xo 

Two children did we stray and talk 

Wise, idle, childish things. 

She listened with big-lipped surprise, 

Breast-deep mid flower and spine: 
Her skin was like a grape, whose veins 15 

Kun snow instead of wine, 
9 



10 DAISY 

She knew not those sweet words she spake, 

Nor knew her own sweet way; 
But there's never a bird, so sweet a song 

Thronged in whose throat that day. 20 

Oh, there were flowers in Storrington 

On the turf and on the spray; 
But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills 

Was the Daisy-flower that day ! 

Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face 25 

She gave me tokens three : — 
A look, a word of her winsome mouth. 

And a wild raspberry. 

A berry red, a guileless look, 

A still word, — strings of sand ! 30 

And yet they made my wild, wild heart 

Fly down to her little hand. 

For standing artless as the air, 

And candid as the skies. 
She took the berries with her hand, 35 

And the love with her sweet eyes. 



DAISY 11 

The fairest things have fleetest end, 

Their scent survives their close: 
But the rose's scent is bitterness 

To him that loved the rose. 40 

She looked a little wistfully, 

Then went her sunshine way: — 
The sea's eye had a mist on it, 

And the leaves fell from the day. 

She went her unremembering way, 45 

She went and left in me 
The pang of all the partings gone. 

And partings yet to be. 

She left me marvelling why my soul 

Was sad that she was glad; 50 

At all the sadness in the sweet, 

The sweetness in the sad. 

Still, still I seemed to see her, still 

Look up wdth soft replies. 
And take the berries with her hand, ss 

And the love with her lovely eyes. 



12 DAI8Y 

Nothing begins, and nothing ends. 

That is not paid with moan; 
For we are born in other^s pain, 

And perish in our own. 6c 



THE POPPY 
To Monica 

Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare, 

And left the flushed print in a poppy there: 

Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came, 

And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame. 

With burnt mouth, red like a lion's, it drank 5 
The blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank. 
And dipped its cup in the purpurate shine 
When the eastern conduits ran with wine. 

Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss, 

And hot as a swinked gypsy is, lo 

And drowsed in sleepy savageries. 

With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss. 

A child and man paced side by side. 
Treading the skirts of eventide; 
But between the clasp of his hand and hers <5 

Lay, felt not, twenty withered years. 

13 



14 THE POPPY 

She turned, with the rout of her dusk South hair, 
And saw the sleeping gypsy there; 
And snatched and snapped it in swift child's whim, 
With "Keep it, long as you live !'' — to him. 20 

And his smile, as nymphs from their laving meres. 
Trembled up from a bath of tears; 
And joy, like a mew sea-rocked apart. 
Tossed on the waves of his troubled heart. 

For he saw what she did not see, 25 

That — as kindled by its own fervency — 

The verge shrivelled inward smoulderingly : 

And suddenly 'twixt his hand and hers 

He knew the twenty withered years — 

No flower, but twenty shrivelled years. 30 

"Was never such thing until this hour,'' 
Low to his heart he said; "the flower 
Of sleep brings wakening to me, 
And of oblivion memory." 

"Was never this thing to me," he said, 35 

"Though with bruised poppies my feet are red!" 
And again to his own heart very low: 
"0 child! I love, for I love and know; 



THE POPPY 15 

^^But you, who love nor know at all 

The diverse chambers in Love's guest-hall, 40 

Where some rise early, few sit long: 

In how differing accents hear the throng 

His great Pentecostal tongue; 

"Who know not love from amity, 

Nor my reported self from me; 45 

A fair fit gift is this, meseems. 

You give — this withering flower of dreams. 

^'0 frankly fickle, and fickly true. 

Do you know what the days will do to you? 

To your love and you what the days will do, 50 

frankly fickle, and fickly true? 

"You have loved me. Fair, three lives — or days: 

'Twill pass with the passing of my face. 

But where / go, your face goes too. 

To watch lest I play false to you. ss 

"I am but, my sweet, your foster-lover, 
Knowing well when certain years are over 
You vanish from me to another; 
Yet I know, and love, like the foster-mother. 



IG THE POPPY 

"So, frankly fickle, and fickly true! 60 

For my brief life-while I take from you 

This token, fair and fit, meseems, 

For me — this withering flower of dreams." 

The sleep-flower sways in the wheat its head, 
Heavy with dreams, as that with bread : 65 

The goodly grain and the sun-flushed sleeper 
The reaper reaps, and Time the reaper. 

I hang 'mid men my needless head. 

And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread: 

The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper 70 

Time shall reap, but after the reaper 

The world shall glean of me, me the sleeper 

Love, love ! your flower of withered dream 

In leaved rhyme lies safe, I deem, 

Sheltered and shut in a nook of rhyme, 75 

From the reaper man, and his reaper Time. 

Love ! I fall into the claws of Time : 

But lasts within a leaved rhyme 

All that the world of me esteems — 

My withered dreams, my withered dreams. 80 



THE MAKING OF VIOLA 

I 

The Father of Heaven 

Spin, daughter Mary, spin, 
Twirl your wheel with silver din; 
Spin, daughter Mary, spin, 
Spin a tress for Viola. 

Angels 

Spin, Queen Mary, a 
Brown tress for Viola ! 

II 

The Father of Heaven 

Weave, hands angelical, 
Weave a woof of flesh to pall — 
Weave, hands angelical — 
Flesh to "nail our Viola. 
17 



18 THE MAKING OF VIOLA 

Angels 

Weave, singing brothers, a 
Velvet flesh for Viola! 

Ill 

The Father of Heaven 

Scoop, young Jesus, for her eyes. 
Wood-browned pools of Paradise — 
Young Jesus, for the eyes, is 

For the eyes of Viola. 

Angels 

Tint, Prince Jesus, a 
Dusked eye for Viola! 

IV 

Tlie Father of Heaven 

Cast a star therein to drown, 
Like a torch in cavern brown, 20 

Sink a burning star to drown 
Whelmed in eyes of Viola. 

Angels 

Lave, Prince Jesus, a 
Star in eyes of Viola! 



THE MAKING OF VIOLA 19 



The Father of Heaven 

Breathe, Lord Paraclete, 2s 

To a bubbled crystal meet — 
Breathe, Lord Paraclete — 
Crystal soul for Viola 

Angels 

Breathe, Regal Spirit, a 

Flashing soul for Viola! 30 



VI 

The Father of Heaven 

Child-angels, from your wings 
Fall the roseal hoverings. 
Child-angels, from your wings, 
On the cLeeks of Viola. 

Angels 

Linger, rosy reflex, a 3S 

Quentjhless stain, on Viola! 



20 THE MAKING OF VIOLA 



VII 



All things being accomplished, saith the Father of 
Heaven 

Bear her down, and bearing, sing, 
Bear her down on spyless wing. 
Bear her down, and bearing, sing 

With a sound of Viola. 40 

Angels 

Music as her name is, a 
Sweet sound of Viola! 



VIII 

Wheeling angels, past espial, 
Danced her down with sound of viol; 
Wheeling angels, past espial, 4S 

Descanting on "Viola.'' 



Angels 

Sing, in our footing, a 
Lovely lilt of "Viola !" 



THE MAKING OF VIOLA 31 



IX 

Baby smiled, mother wailed. 
Earthward while the sweetling sailed; 
Mother smiled, baby wailed, 
When to earth came Viola. 



Arid her elders shall say 

So soon have we taught you a 
Way to weep, poor Viola ! 



Smile, sweet baby, smile, 5S 

For you will have weeping- while ; 
Native in your Heaven is smile — 
But your weeping, Viola? 

Whence your smiles we know, but ah ! 
Whence your weeping, Viola? — 60 

Our first gift to you is a 
Gift of tears, my Viola! 



LITTLE JESUS 

Ex ore infantium Deus et lactentium perfecisti laudem 

Little Jesus, was Thou shy 
Once, and just as small as I? 
And what did it feel like to be 
Out of Heaven, and just like me? 
Didst Thou sometimes think of there^ 
And ask where all the angels were? 
I should think that I would cry 
For my house all made of sky; 
I would look about the air, 
And wonder where my angels were; 
And at waking 'twould distress me — 
Not an angel there to dress me ! 
Hadst Thou ever any toys, 
Like us little girls and boys? 
And didst Thou play in Heaven with all 
The angels that were not too tall, 
With stars for marbles? Did the things 
22 



LITTLE JESUS 23 

Play Can you see me? through their wings? 

And did Thy Mother let Thee spoil 

Thy robes, with playing on our soil? 20 

How nice to have them always new 

In Heaven, because 'twas quite clean blue! 

Didst Thou kneel at night to pray, 

And didst Thou join Thy hands, this way? 

And did they tire sometimes, being young, 25 

And make the prayer seem very long? 

And dost Thou like it best, that we 

Should join our hands to pray to Thee? 

I used to think, before I knew. 

The prayer not said unless we do. 30 

And did Thy Mother at the night 

Kiss Thee, and fold the clothes in right? 

And didst Thou feel quite good in bed, 

Kissed, and sweet, and thy prayers said? 

Thou canst not have forgotten all 35 

That it feels like to be small: 

And Thou know'st I cannot pray 

To Thee in my father's way — 

When Thou wast so little, say, 

Couldst Thou talk Thy Father's way?— 40 



24 LITTLE JESUS 

So, a little Child, come down 

And hear a child's tongue like Thy own; 

Take me by the hand and walk, 

And listen to my baby -talk. 

To Thy Father show my prayer 4S 

(He will look, Thou art so fair), 

And say: "0 Father, I, Thy Son, 

Bring the prayer of a little one." 

And He will smile, that children's tongue 

Has not changed since Thou wast young! so 



LILIUM EEGIS 

Lily of the King ! low lies thy silver wing, 

And long has been the hour of thine nnqueening; 
And thy scent of Paradise on the night-wind spills 
it sighs, 

JSTor any take the secrets of its meaning. 
Lily of the King! I speak a heavy thing, s 

patience, most sorrowful of daughters ! 
Lo, the hour is at hand for the troubling of the land, 

And red shall be the breaking of the waters. 

Sit fast upon thy stalk, when the blast shall with 
thee talk. 
With the mercies of the King for thine awning ; lo 
And the Just understand that thine hour is at hand. 

Thine hour at hand with power in the dawning. . 
When the nations lie in blood, and their kings a 
broken brood. 
Look up, most sorrowful of daughters! 
25 



26 LILIUM REOIS 

Lift up thy head and hark what sounds are in the 

dark, is 

For His feet are coming to thee on the waters ! 

Lily of the King! I shall not see, that sing, 

I shall not see the hour of thy queening ! 
But my Song shall see, and wake like a flower that 
dawn-winds shake. 

And sigh with joy the odours of its meaning. 20 
Lily of the King, remember then the thing 

That this dead mouth sang; and thy daughters. 
As they dance before His way, sing there on the Day 

What I sang when the Night was on the waters! 



TO A SNOWFLAKE 

What heart could have thought you ? — 

Past our devisal 

(0 filigree petal!) 

Fashioned so purely, 

Fragilely, surely, s 

From what Paradisal 

Imagineless metal. 

Too costly for cost? 

Who hammered you, wrought you, 

From argentine vapour? — o 

'God was my shaper. 

Passing surmisal. 

He hammered, He wrought me. 

From curled silver vapour. 

To lust of His mind :— ^s 

Though could'st not have thought me! 

So purely, so palely, 

27 



28 TO A SNOW FLAKE 

Tinily, surely, 
Mightily, frailly, 
Insculped and embossed, 
With His hammer of wind, 
And His graver of frost.' 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

'In no Strange Land.' 

WoELD invisible, we view thee, 
world intangible, we touch thee, 

world unknowable, we know thee, 
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! 

Does the fish soar to find the ocean. 
The eagle plunge to find the air — 

That we ask of the stars in motion 
If they have rumour of thee there? 

Not where the wheeling systems darken. 
And our benumbed conceiving soars ! — 

The drift of pinions, would we hearken, 
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. 

The angels keep their ancient places; — 
Turn but a stone, and start a wing! 

'Tis ye, 'lis your estranged faces. 

That miss the many-splendoured thing. 
29 



30 THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) 
Cry; — and upon thy so sore loss 

Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder 
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. 

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, 
Cry, — clinging Heaven by the hems; 

And lo, Christ walking on the water 
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames ! 



COMMENTARY ON THE HOUND 
OF HEAVEN 



ANALYSIS 

A. General outline, 11. 1-15. 

I. Path of the pursued, 11. 1-9. 
II. Refrain: Persistent love thwarts the pursued, 
11. 10-15. 

B. Pursuit, 11. 16-110. 

I. First shelter, 11. 16-24. 

(a) Shelter sought in love from man and 

maid, 11. 16-21. 
(6) Shelter prevented, 11. 22-24. 
II. Second shelter, 11. 25-51. 
(a) Shelter sought. 

(i) In the heavens, 11. 25-29. 
(ii) In the dawn and eve, 11. 30-33. 
(6) Shelter denied, 11. 34-37. 
(c) Shelter sought in the winds, 11. 38-45. 
{d) Refrain: Persistent love thwarts the 
pursued, 11. 46-51. 

III. Third shelter, 11. 52-60. 

(a) Shelter sought in the love of children, 

11. 52-57. 
(6) Shelter prevented, 11. 58-60. 

IV. Fourth shelter, 11. 61-110. 

33 



34 ANALYSIS 

(a) Shelter sought in fellowship with Na- 
ture's children, 11. 61-75. 
(6) Fellowship shared, 11. 76-94. 
(i) With clouds, 11. 76-79. 
(ii) With living things, 11. 80-83. 
(iii) With evening and morning, 11. 

84-87. 
(iv) With the weather, 11. 88-94. 

(c) Shelter useless, 11. 95-104. 

(d) Refrain: Persistent love thwarts the 

pursued, 11. 105-110. 

C. The pursued awakens, 11. 111-154. 

I. To its shattered condition, 11. 111-129. 

(a) Various portrayals of its plight, 11. 

111-123. 
(6) Poetry itself has proven a failure, 11. 

124-129. 
II. To the meaning of God's isolating love, 11. 

130-154. 
(a) The Pursuer is questioned, 11. 130-135. 
(&) Another glance at self, 11. 136-142. 
(c) The vision, 11. 143-154. 

D. The Pursuer closes in, 11. 155-176. 

I. Wrong notions corrected, 11. 155-160. 
II. Correct estimate of self, 11. 161-170. 
III. Lost treasures are safe, 11. 171-176. 

E. The pursued yields, 11. 177-182. 

I. The soul's realization, 11. 177-179. 
II. The Pursuer's welcome, 11. 180-182. 
Lines 24, 45, 51, 110, 182 are key lines to the whole poem. 



NOTES 

Hound of Heaven. With felicitous grace and reveren- 
tial delicacy Thompson gives Our Lord an unwonted and 
daring title, and throughout the poem never once ex- 
plicitly refers to the metaphor. A lesser writer would 
inevitably have rendered the comparison very repellent. 
The fuller development is left to our^own devotional, inward 
thoughts. 

Thompson, of course, had scriptural warrant for using 
such type of comparisons from the animal world. No 
phrase of Holy Writ is more current than "the Lamb of 
God" (St. John i, 29, 36; Apoc. v, 12, vi, 16, vii, 14). Each 
Holy Week we hear Isaias' plaint (Isaias liii, 7) : "He 
shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter and shall be dumb 
as a lamb before his shearer," which thought is repeated 
in Acts viii, 32. Opening the Apocalypse once more we 
find another metaphor (Apocalypse v, 5) : "And one of 
the Anciento said to me: 'Weep not; behold the lion of 
the tribe of Juda, the root of David, hath prevailed to 
open the book.' " Lastly, we find another metaphor in St. 
Paul (Hebrews xiii, 11-12), where with true and sound 
literary instinct he applies the symbolism of the offering 
but not the name to Our Lord, thus reversing the present 
process of Thompson: "For the bodies of those beasts, 

35 



36 NOTES 

whose blood is brought into the holies by the high priest 
for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus 
also, that He might sanctify the people by His own blood, 
suffered without the gate." 

11, 1-15. With the bold, inclusive sweep of genius, 
Thompson in these first verses outlines the whole scope of 
the poem and suggests unmistakably its outcome. The 
merely material picture of these lines is noteworthy: a 
branching path, a portico, a maze, a mist, a sparkling 
stream, a forest glade, and lastly a vast canyon. 

1. 1. With another masterly stroke, we are given the 
scope of the poem in the first three words, "7 fled Him." 
That this is the central thought is still further accentu- 
ated by the presence of the comma after "Him," and the 
repetition of the phrase at the beginning of the second 
and third lines. 

The reason of the flight is given us in lines 19-21, and 
it is a misguided love of self, not catching even the sur- 
face meaning of those compelling words of Our Lord: "He 
that will save his life shall lose it: and he that shall lose 
his life for My sake shall find it" (St. Matthew xvi, 25). 
St. Augustine says so well: "Accordingly, two cities have 
been formed by two loves: the earthly, by the love of self 
even to the contempt of God; the heavenly, by the love of 
God even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, 
glories in itself; the latter in the Lord" (City of God, 
Book XIV, 28). Yet throughout the poem it is quite es- 
sential to remember that there is no suggestion of unholy 
love. It is all a misguided quest, a seeking for heart's 



NOTES 37 

ease there where it cannot be found. In the end tke cheated 
soul will bewail its folly as did the Jews of old, who had 
put their trust in Egypt and Ethiopia, only to find, in 
the defeat of these, their own undoing. "And they shall be 
afraid, and ashamed of Ethiopia, their hope, and of 
Egypt, their glory. And the inhabitants of this isle shall 
say: " 'Lo, this was our hope, to whom we fled for help 
to deliver us from the face of the Assyrians, and how shall 
we be able to escape?'" (Isaias xx, 5, 6). 

Nights and days. Not merely "always," but through 
sunshine and darkness, both physical, mental, and spiritual. 
Such indeed is the underlying thought of lines 1-9. 

1. 2. Arches of the years. Life is pictured as a journey 
down a long colonnade, each arch of which is a year. By 
such imagery, the poet conveys to us the fact that the 
flight from God, though swift in action, was not swift in 
time, for it lengthened out into years. Compare line 9 
and note. 

1. 3. Labyrinthine ways. The mind's unlimited ca- 
pacity of grasping and dwelling on objects without number 
seemed to give hope of escape. Compare "losing one's self 
in thought." 

Many a soul has tried to lose sight of God by study and 
research, and some have — all too unfortunately — succeeded 
in losing Him in perplexed and specious reasonings into 
which they have wandered as into a labyrinth. 

1. 4. Tennyson ("In Memoriam," Canto xxiv\ speaks of 
"the haze of grief." Grief Avith its subsequent tears drives 
many a man to God, for as Dante says: "Sorrow re- 



38 NOTES 

marries us to God" ; but others again it hurries away from 
God and leads them to seek help from fellow-creatures 
alone, as did the Jews when threatened by the Assyrians: 
"Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help, trusting 
in horses, and putting their confidence in chariots, because 
they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very 
strong; and have not trusted in the Holy One of Israel, 
and have not sought after the Lord. . . . Egypt is man, 
and not God: and their horses flesh, and not spirit; and 
the Lord shall put down His hand, and the helper shall 
fall, and he that is helped shall fall and they shall all 
be confounded together. For thus saith the Lord to me: 
Like as the lion roareth, and the lion's whelp upon his 
prey, and when a multitude of shepherds shall come against 
him, he will not fear at their voice, nor be afraid of their 
multitude, so shall the Lord of hosts come down to fight 
upon Mount Sion, and upon the hills thereof. As birds 
flying, so will the Lord of hosts protect Jerusalem, pro- 
tecting and delivering, passing over and saving" (Isaias 
xxxi, 1, 3-5). 

Homer (Iliad iii, 10-12) gives a fine picture of the hid- 
ing power of the mist: "Even as when the south wind 
sheddeth mist over the crests of a mountain, mist un- 
welcome to the shepherd, but to the robber better than 
night, and a man can see no further than he casteth a 
stone. . . ." (Lang, Leaf, and Myers translation.) It was 
the soul's endeavor to hide behind such hopeless, stubborn 
grief that hung between God and itself like a cloud. 

11. 4-5. Tears — laughter. Pain and pleasure alike were 
sought as guides away from God; but neither could dull 



NOTES 39 

the fundamental yearning, coextensive with itself, of the 
human soul for God. This elemental craving for complete 
happiness, ever elusive in this world, where sunshine and 
shadow play upon us so constantly, is one of the strong 
rational proofs for a life beyond the grave where God will 
be possessed unendingly. 

1. 5. Running laughter. > We often speak of a smile 
"rippling" over one's face. 

I. 6. Vistaed hopes. Hopes which, when realized, would 
last, not for a moment and then fade away, but would 
reach out into time as vistas reach out into space. Thus 
when we gaze with longing towards such hopes, they seem 
"vistaed." 

II. 6-7. Note striking contrast — Up vistaed hopes I 
sped, and shot, etc. When hope lights our way, our jour- 
ney is indeed swift; but who has not felt the hurtling 
force of gloom and desolation, when from the heights of 
hope we are "shot" into the abyss of "chasmed fears" with 
heart-sickening speed? It is of this the Psalmist speaks 
(Psalm xxix, G-8) : 

"For wrath is in His indignation. 

And life in His good will. 
In the evening weeping shall have place, 

And in the morning gladness. 
And in my abundance I said* 

'I shall never be moved.' 
Lord, in Thy favor. Thou gavest strength to my beauty, 

Thou turnedst away Thy face from me, and I became 
troubled." 



40 NOTES 

Note further that when hope led him on, the motion 
of traveling was his own — "I sped," but when grief 
came upon him he was hurled with a motion not his own. 
Fear being "the yielding up of the powers of succor 
from thought," the soul is no longer in control of its 
actions. 

1. 8. Adown. Conveys the impression of falling con- 
tinually and ever lower. The onomatopceia of the line is 
noteworthy. 

Titanic glooms. Glooms that were not only broad and 
high and so enveloping that into their nether darkness no 
ray of hope could steal, but almost brutish in their ag- 
gressiveness against the soul. Then it is that soul-paralysis 
is wont to come, unless the light of faith has been kept 
burning in our hearts "as a light shining in a dark place" 
(2 Peter i, 19). This line recalls Dante's Inferno and 
Dora's illustrations thereof. Titanic is meant undoubtedly 
to recall the w^ar of the Titans against the gods, so fre- 
quently read in pagan mythology. 

I. 9. Strong feet. By a happy use of "transferred epi- 
thet," strong is applied to the feet rather than to the whole 
man. "Strong" foretells the end of the pursuit, for "the 
strong win the race." 

Followed, Followed. The repetition continues to con- 
vey subtly the idea of a long and persistent pursuit. (Cf. 
line 2 and note.) 

II. 10-15. Three several times (lines 10-15, 46-51, 
105-110), does this refrain occur; and it is in great meas- 
ure by means of this subtle suggestion that we are made 



NOTES 41 

aware of the progress of the pursuit, until we read in 
line 177, "Halts by me that footfall." 

The slow, majestic rhythm of these lines is in itself 
symbolic of the poise of the Pursuer, and markedly so, 
coming as they do after the swift sweep of the preceding 
lines. 

As we read this refrain and grasp the central idea of 
the poem, we may recall the words of the Psalmist (Psalm 
xviii, 6, 7) : 

"He hath rejoiced as a giant to run the way: 
His going out is from the end of heaven, 

And his circuit even to the end thereof: 

And there is none that can hide himself from his heat." 

1. 10. Note the oxymorons in this and the following 
lines. 

1. 12. Deliberate speed. The pursuit was deliberately 
entered upon, and the speed was not precipitate or im- 
petuous. The result is inevitable. The pursuit of the 
soul by God is not the result of a chance whim, for to 
predicate such of God were contradictory and blasphemous: 
"Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. There- 
fore have I drawn thee, taking pity on thee" (Jeremias 
xxxi, 3). 

Instancy. Cf. note on line 14. 

1. 13. A voice beat. Its beat was as rhythmical as 
man's own heart, and stirred up within him the beat of the 
deathless voice of conscience. 

1. 14. Instant In its radical sense of pressing upon^ 



42 NOTES 

urgent (Latin in and sto) . Thompson was fond of bringing 
words back to their original meaning. Compare lines 49, 
66, (This tendency is evidenced by many modern writers 
and is one of the w^ays by which a language rejuvenates 
itself, e.g., "the intolerable face of God," where intolerable 
is used in its root sense, shorn of any acquired, sinister 
meaning.) 

1. 15. The words are not understood by the soul nor does 
it practically realize that "it is hard for thee to kick 
against the goad" (Acts ix, 5), which in every case is the 
grace of God urging on to greater love of Him alone. It 
has yet to learn under tlie flail of suffering and withered 
hopes that "there is no wisdom, there is no prudence, there 
is no counsel against the Lord" (Proverbs xxi, 30). Then 
and then only will the soul cry out, "Too late have I learned 
to love thee"; and shall warn other souls: "Remember 
thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the time 
of affliction come, and the years draw nigh of which thou 
shalt say: They please me not: Before the sun, and the 
light, and the moon, and the stars be darkened, and the 
clouds return after the rain . . . before the silver cord be 
broken, and the golden fillet shrink back, and the pitcher 
be crushed at the fountain, and the wheel be broken upon 
the cistern, and the dust return into the earth, from whence 
it was, and the spirit return to God, who gave it. Vanity 
of vanities . . . and all things are vanity" ( Ecclesiastes 
xii, 1-7). 

Betray. By refusing to harbor and conceal. In this line 
the poet gives us a distinct fore-view of the outcome of 
the pursuit. 



NOTES 43 

11. 16-24. The soul is pictured as pleading for shelter 
at a human heart, which is likened to a cottage, with 
little casement windows. The human heart is indeed small, 
for it is earthly and therefore only a poor "clay-shuttered" 
cottage, doomed one day to house devouring worms as its 
latest dwellers. 

1. 16, I pleaded. There was all the poignancy of a 
lonely soul crowded into that cry for harborage. 

Outlaw-wise. Because he was fleeing from Him who is 
Justice itself and to whom all order is due, a fugitive from 
Divine Law and the God who would make him a prisoner 
of love. 

1. 17. Compare "Arras'd in purple like the house of 
kings" (An Anthem of Earth). These and other metaphors 
concerning the heart are thought by some to be due to 
Thompson's study of medicine. Compare the concluding 
lines of "An Arab Love Song": 

"And thou — what needest with thy tribes' black tents 
VVho hast the red pavilion of my lieart?" 

1. 18. Intertwining charities. So manifold and so in- 
terlacing were these charities that they quite covered the 
whole heart; thus they made it susceptible to every appeal 
and promised a secure and inviolate refuge once the as- 
sured admittance was gained. The casement, being here 
the human heart, is trellised lot merely with the vine of 
the love of God but also with the love of creatures. We 
may paraphrase and read: I knew His love but felt that 
if I surrendered directly to Him, there would be nothing 
for self; and so I sought a compromise in a heart where 



44 NOTES 

there were heavenly and earthly loves interlaced, where I 
could love God in the creature and the creature, too, and 
there find a reciprocated love from that creature. 

1. 19. I knew. This knowledge was as yet purely theo- 
retical and imperfect. Such knowledge every Christian, 
even the most ignorant, possesses. When, however, it be- 
comes practical, then a vitalizing force is thrown into life 
which carries on swiftly to the stark grandeur of a saint. 

1. 20. All have heard the words of God: "I am the Lord 
thy God, mighty, jealous" (Exodus xx, 5), and again: 
'The Lord His name is Jealous; He is a jealous God" 
(Exodus xxxiv, 14). Again they have listened time and 
again to the words of our Lord Himself: "If any man 
come to Me and hate not his father and mother and 
wife and children and brothers and sisters, yea and his 
own life also, he cannot be My disciple" ( St. Luke xiv, 26 ) . 
All have heard indeed, but many have misread these words. 
Even though we had never heard His other commands: 
"Honor tliy father and thy mother, that thou mayest be 
long-lived upon the land which the Lord thy God will 
give thee" (Exodus xx, 12), and again: ''Husbands love 
your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and delivered 
Himself up for it" (Ephesians v, 25) ; even though we 
were ignorant of the fact that to "hate," in the language 
which our Lord spoke, in such setting means "to love 
less" ( as in Malachias i, 2-3, "I have loved Jacob but have 
hated Esau") ; sound spiritual reasoning would tell us 
that He did not mean to undo all natural or acquired love. 
What He did mean was: 1. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy 



NOTES 45 

God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul, and 
with all thy strength and with all thy mind" (St. Luke 
X, 27 ) . If any lower love runs counter to this love of God, 
we must be done with the baser love; 2. That, though we 
do love others, we must love all in God and for God, i.e., 
love them because He commands us to love them, and as 
He commands us, always remembering that any goodness or 
holiness or excellence we find in them is but a faint re- 
flection of His infinite perfections: '^They are but broken 
lights of Thee, and Thou, O Lord, art more than they" 
(In Memoriam). "God gave us love, something to love 
He only lent." 

It is a wholly wrong grasp of this principle that makes 
many beginners in the spiritual life experience that fear 
of which Thompson here tells. A foreseen isolation of lone- 
liness then makes the spiritual life an unbearable yoke to 
them. Unquestionably for those who find it in their hearts 
to strive for the higher planes of holiness and imperatively 
for all who have vowed themselves to a religious life of 
celibacy, much pruning and cutting of earthly affections is 
necessary. Each such is indeed — 

"Chosen of God his lonely way to wend. 

Out from all glare and glory to the shade, 
The shadow of the Cross where saints are made." 

Yes, it seems a lonely way to those who know not the 
music that is in the heart as it travels alone with God. 
It is not, however, beginners only who feel this dread of 
God. Even the Saints at times were wont to struggle 



46 NOTES 

against God, especially in His more marvelous manifesta- 
tions of special affection. Thus St. Theresa tells us of 
her struggle against being miraculously elevated off the 
ground into the air while in prayer : 

"I repeat it; you feel and see yourself carried away you 
know not whither. For though we feel how delicious it 
is, yet the weakness of our nature makes us afraid at 
first ... so trying is it that I would very often resist 
and exert all my strength, particularly at those times when 
the rapture was coming on me in public. I did so, too, 
very often when I was alone, because I was afraid of de- 
lusions. Occasionally I was able, by great efforts, to make 
a slight resistance, but afterwards I was worn out, like 
a person who had been contending with a strong giant; at 
other times it was impossible to resist at all." (The Month, 
April, 1919, p. 274.) 

1. 20. Sore adread. There is no pain like to this an- 
guish of the soul that is face to face with a great renunci- 
ation for God and finds not within itself sufficient gen- 
erosity to make the surrender. "He is wise in heart and 
mighty in strength. Who hath resisted Him and hath 
found peace?" (Job ix, 4). "Too grasping is that heart 
for which God is not enough." Unhappily the purview of 
the soul is often so straightly shortened by the flickering 
lights and shadows of this vale of tears, that it cannot 
realize that it is well to say, "I'd rather walk in the dark 
with God, than go alone in the light." Indeed, when God 
is not with us all light is real darkness; whereas God, 
Eternal Light, makes the noon of night as the brightest 
summer sky. 



NOTES 47 

Naught beside. In many places in the Old Testament 
{e.g., Genesis xvii, 1, Exodus vi, 3, etc.), God is called in 
the Hebrew text "El Schaddai" "God our Sufficiency." Such 
He is indeed and He alone, and such He will prove to be 
to us in heaven; but here in this land of exile our faith 
grows dull at times and we would fain find "our suffi- 
ciency" in things of sense and of time. 

Commenting on this sacred name, the learned and saintly 
Cornelius a Lapide, S. J., writes (Genesis xvii, 1) : 

"God therefore is our Schaddai, who satisfies, who sates 
each craving of ours with good things. Why, then, un- 
happy man, do you stray through many things, seek rest, 
and do not find it? Do you love riches? You will not be 
satisfied, for they are not Schaddai. Do you love honors? 
You will not be filled, for they are not Schaddai. Do you 
love the gracefulness and the beauty of the body? They 
are not your Schaddai. Oh, heart of man, unworthy heart, 
heart that hast known sorrows, that hast been crushed 
by sorrows, why will you make your search through vain 
and frail and short-lived and deceitful goods? Not by 
them can the hunger, not by them can the thirst of the 
soul be allayed. Love your true Schaddai. He alone can 
fill every corner of your soul. He alone can quench your 
thirst with a rushing stream, yea, with an ocean of pleas- 
ures, since the fount of life is within Him. To the mind 
He is the fulness of light, to the will a manifold peace, to 
the memory a continuation of eternity." 

St. Augustine tells us: "Thou sufficest for God, let God 
suffice for thee." 

1. 22. The human heart is indeed a "little casement"; 



48 NOTES 

for, though it opens itself widest, it can never satisfy in 
another human heart that craving which God alone can 
adequately allay. 

1. 23. Approach. Though the Pursuer has not yet 
come up, His very drawing near sharply closes the gates 
of the heart. Not indeed that the human heart, in whose 
love rest is sought, always withdraws its love; but the 
very nearness of God brings it to pass that the craving 
soul, from its side, finds no comfort in such proffered or 
even given love. Yes, even in hearts that love God and 
seek Him rightly, the increasing nearness of God, though 
it does not "clash to" the opened "little casements," does 
cause all human love to seem a poor, frail thing indeed, 
and not worth the earning, unless it be from a heart that 
is quite attuned to God. 

Gust — clash. The words convey perfectly the idea of 
great speed in the pursuit. 

I. 24. All the peevish ingenuity of the soul, afraid to 
give itself to God, finds itself completely checkmated by 
the pursuing love of God for it, even as a petulant child, 
who would run away to its harm, cannot elude the watch- 
ful eye of its mother. With the "little casement" clashed 
to, the fugitive must be off again and seek new har- 
bor. 

II. 25-51. In these lines the soul is pictured as seeking 
a refuge in the broad expanse of the heavens. It goes to 
the stars and the moon, to the day and to the night, to 
all the winds, only to find its "own betrayal in their con- 
stancy." The conviction of its own uneased heart is voiced 



NOTES 49 

by the Pursuer in line 51. "Naught shelters thee, who will 
not shelter Me." 

11. 25-26. The image here needs clarifying. Frustrated 
in his quest for love from men, he flees across the margent 
or margin of the world, i.e., out beyond the bounds of this 
small earth of ours and comes to the stars, which are 
pictured as having gateways of gold. At the bars of these 
gates, he knocks sharply and impatiently {smiting), mak- 
ing them resound loudly ( clanged bars, by prolepsis ) . 
Then he hurries across to the moon, which is pictured 
as a shadowy castle {pale ports conveying this image), 
at whose huge silver doors he beats for entrance, thus 
making them ring with that pleasing discord peculiar to 
silver. 

In lines 16-23 the picture of a lowly cottage was given, 
as fit symbol of the human heart. Here, in keeping with 
our wonted thoughts of the skies, a firm-builded castle 
is portrayed with its "gold gateways," "clanged bars," 
"pale ports." 

1. 25. Across the margent of the world. If the soul 
sought aright, the stars and the heavens would bring it 
comfort. A Monica and an Augustine, as they sat the 
long evenings out on the balcony at Rome, knew how to 
find in the stars a pathway unto God. Yes, and when 
centuries had passed, Ignatius, the one-time cavalier of 
Spain, would rise from like contemplation of the heavens 
with his wonted cry: "How base do earthly things become 
to me, when I gaze upon the heavens." Foolish soul that 
has forgotten the hymn of its childhood days: 



50 NOTES 

I. "Out beyond the shining, 
Of the farthest star. 
Thou art ever stretching, 
Infinitely far." 

Thus its hope of escape is fruitless. (See Psalm cxxxviii, 
quoted in Introductory Essay, p. xxxiv). 

1. 26. Troubled. Shows fretful anxiety to enter. It, 
moreover, hints at the peace and gentle quiet of the 
heavens. Rebel man alone brings discord. 

1. 28. Fretted. Carries on the idea conveyed by "trou- 
bled." The petulant haste of the outlaw marring the 
quiet of the stars. The "dulcet jars" reminds one of 
"symphonia discors" of Horace. 

1. 30. To dawn: be sudden. The coming of daAvn 
always seems a sudden thing. Indeed we speak of the 
"daybreak," just as centuries ago the Hebrews named the 
dawn "boqer" (from the root baqar to "cleave," "open"), 
tlie "cleaver" of the darkness. 

Note the impatience so characteristic of the sick; above 
all, of the sick of mind. When man is trying to get 
away from the voice of conscience and of God, the worst 
terror is to lack constant change and thus be thrown back 
on self and self-introspection. In Deuteronomy xxviii, 65- 
67, God pictures such a visitation of soul-agony coming 
upon the Jews, if they violate His law: "Neither shalt 
thou be quiet, even in those nations, nor shall there be 
any rest for the sole of thy foot. For the Lord will give 
thee a fearful heart, and languishing eyes, and a soul con- 
sumed with pensiveness: and thy life shall be as it were 



NOTES 51 

hanging before thee. Thou shalt fear i.jght and day, 
neither shalt thou trust thy life. In the morning thou 
shalt say: Who will grant me evening? and at evening: 
Who will grant me morning? for the fearfulness of thy 
heart, wherewith thou shalt be terrified, and for those 
things which thou shalt see with thy eyes." 

Thompson must often have felt thus during his days of 
penury in London. The following lines speak eloquently 
(Sister Songs, Part 1st) : 

"Forlorn, and faint, and stark, 
I had endured through watches of the dark 

The abashless inquisition of each star. 
Yea, was the outcast mark 

Of all those heavenly passers' scrutiny; 

Stood bound and helplessly 
For Time to shoot his barbed minutes at me; 
Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour 

In night's slow-wheeled car ; 
Until the tardy dawn dragged me at length 
From under those dread wheels; and, bled of strength, 

I waited the inevitable last." 

1. 31. If the soul, yet in this vale of tears, wherein 
God's "mercy most delights to spare," would only realize 
that God's pursuit is not one of vengeful wrath but a pur- 
suit to rescue it from its own folly, then this desire to 
be hid from God would never find expression. Only when 
life is over and the condemnatory judgment is come, is 
there place and real reason for what we read so strongly 
put by St. John: "And the kings of the earth and the 



52 NOTES 

princes and the tribunes, and the rich and the strong and 
every bondman, and every freeman hid themselves in the 
dens and in the rocks of mountains: and they shall say 
to the mountains and the rocks: Fall upon us and hide us 
from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne, and 
from the wrath of the Lamb" (Apocalypse vi, 15, 16). 
Sin alone can make us want to be away and hide from God. 
It was sin that staged the memorable scene in paradise: 
"And when they heard the voice of the Lord God walking 
in paradise at the afternoon air, Adam and his wife hid 
themselves from the face of the Lord God, amidst the trees 
of paradise" (Genesis iii, 8). 

Thompson's varied imagery of the sky is astounding. 
Compare lines 40-44, 68, 69, 77-79, 85, 86, 92, 95, lOL 
Compare Evangeline: 

"Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, 
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the 
Angels." 

1. 32. Tremendous Lover. God is a tremendous Lover: 
( 1 ) for His love is etemal — "Yea, I have loved thee with 
an everlasting love. Therefore I have drawn thee taking 
pity on thee" (Jeremias xxxi, 3); (2) for His love is 
unsurpassed. "Can a woman forget her infant, so as not 
to have pity on the son of her womb? And if she should 
forget, yet will I not forget thee" (Isaias xlix, 15); (3) 
for His love is insistent — for when God wills to win the 
full love of the human heart, there is no silencing His 
grace's knocking "Behold I stand at the gate and knock" 



NOTES 53 

(Apocalypse iii, 20) ; (4) for His love is munificent — 
giving us gifts of inward grace in this life and a reward 
surpassing thought in the next. "Eye hath not seen, nor 
ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, 
what things God hath prepared for them that love him" 
(1 Corinthians ii, 9) ; (5) for His love is overwhelming — 
of other saints than St. Francis Xavier has the following 
been told: "Francis was often overheard crying out dur- 
ing prayer, with his hands on his heart and eyes raised 
to heaven: 'Basta ya, Sefior, basta!' (Enough, Lord, 
enough ) . He was also known to open his soutane and 
pour water upon his chest, so ardent was the fire of divine 
love that inflamed his heart" (The Life of St. Francis 
Xavier — M. T. Kelly, Ch. V) ; (6) for His love is change- 
less — "Jesus Christ yesterday, and to-day, and the same 
forever" (Hebrews xiii, 8) ; (7) lastly (bringing "tre- 
mendous" back to its root sense of "making to fear") be- 
cause His love is so great and so overwhelming and so 
exclusive tiiat it does make the poor unschooled human 
soul fear the isolating greatness o-f this same love. Com- 
pare lines 19-21 and note. 

1. 33. Vague veil. The veil of night is vague in itself 
and makes all objects vague. Thus would it be harder 
to be found by the Lover. Compare Dante (Inferno, 
Canto III) : 

"Various tongues 

Made up a tumult that forever whirls 

Round through the air wdth solid darkness stained. 

Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies." 



54 NOTES 

11. 34-37. Inanimate nature is in its every component 
part a mirror of some excellence in God: the storm, of 
His power; the cataract, of His grandeur; the flower, of 
His beauty. Though we may misuse them, we can never 
change their nature; and thus they ever faithfully por- 
tray their Creator and remain loyal to Him. St. Ignatius 
in the meditation on "Personal Sin," after making us 
parade our sins before us and "weigh" them, and after 
making us pit our poor selves against God whom we 
have offended by thus misusing the wills He bestowed 
on us and the creatures He gave to us, suggests that there 
will come forth from our soul, "a cry of wonder with 
a flood of emotion, ranging in thought through all creatures, 
— how they have suffered me to live and have preserved 
me in life, — how the angels, being the sword of divine 
justice, have borne with me and guarded and prayed for 
me, — how the Saints have been interceding and praying 
for me, — and the heavens, sun, moon, stars and elements, 
fruits, birds, fishes and animals, — and the earth, how^ it 
has not opened to swallow me up, creating new hells for 
my eternal torment therein" (Spiritual Exercises of St. 
Ignatius, translated by Rev. Jos. Rickaby, S. J.). 

For the antithetical verbal structure of these lines we 
have many an example in the writings of St. Augustine. 
The following from Father A. J. Ryan's "Nocturne" sounds 
a like, though lesser, note : 

"To be faithless oft means to be faithful, 
To be false often means to be true; 



NOTES 55 

The vale that loves clouds that are golden 
Forgets them for skies that are blue. 

"To forget often means to remember 
What we had forgotten too long; 

The fragrance is not the bright flower, 
The echo is not the sweet song." 

Tennyson (Lancelot and Elaine) sings: 

" . but now 

The shackles of an old love straightened him, 

His honor rooted in dishonor stood, 

And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true." 

1. 38. Note the alliteration and the onomatopoetic effect 
in these lines. "To" with the verb "sue" is unusual. How- 
ever compare "make suit to." 

Compare a similar thought in Isaias xxx, 15, 16: "For 
thus saith the Lord God the Holy One of Israel: If you 
return and be quiet, you shall be saved : in silence and in 
hope shall your strength be. And you would not: but have 
said: No, but we will flee to horses: therefore shall you 
flee. And we will mount upon swift ones : therefore shall 
they be swifter that shall pursue after you." 

1. 39. Mane. In this one word the whole metaphor of 
the cloud-horses is foreshadowed. 

I. 40. Smoothly fleet. Swift but not boisterous. 

II. 41-42. Differing interpretations have been made of 
these lines, i. "Swift" is intransitive and "long savaix- 



56 NOTES 

nahs of the blue" is in apposition to "they." Thus the 
thought would be, that the breath of a quiet breeze on a 
clear blue day makes us think that it has come from afar, 
and that it is very long like a "savannah." Compare "Wind 
of the JVfoor," by C. Scollard, especially the opening line: 
"Wind of the Moor, breath of the vast free reaches." 

ii. "Swift" is transitive, governing "long savannahs." 
"The long savannahs of the blue" are then the blue dome 
of heaven itself. 

1. 42. Compare Psalm ciii, 1-4: 

"Bless the Lord, my soul. 
Lord my God, Thou art exceeding great: 

With splendor and glory art Thou clad, 

Thou coverest Thyself with light as with a garment; 
Spreadest out the heavens like a tent-cloth. 

Who lays the beams of His upper-chambers in the wa- 
ters ; 
Who makes the clouds His chariot: 

Who makes His way on the wings of the wind; 
Who makes His messengers winds: 

His ministers a flaming fire." 

"In these verses God is figured as an earthly potentate, 
clad in splendor, enthroned under a lofty canopy ( = 'tent- 
cloth'), possessing towering palaces, swift chariots, and a 
countless retinue" (Rev. J. M'Swiney, S. J., Translation of 
the Psalms and Canticles). 

Again we read in Habacuc (iii, 8, 11): "Wast Thou 
angry, Lord, with the rivers? Or was Thy wrath upon 



NOTES 57 

the rivers? Or Thy indignation in the sea? Who will 
ride upon Thy horses: and Thy chariots are salvation. . . . 
The sun and the moon stood still in their habitation, in 
the light of Thy arrows, they shall go in the brightness of 
Thy glittering spear." 

1, 44. Just as wildly charging horses strike fire from 
beneath their feet, so these heavenly steeds, the winds, 
awaken the lightnings as their feet "spurn" the ground, 
i.e., thrust the floor of heaven hurriedly away from them. 
We read in Thompson's "Ode to the Setting Sun": 

"Wide o'er rout-trampled night 
Flew spurned the pebbled stars." 

1. 45. Fear wist not. Fear could suggest no avenue, 
down which to flee, that Love could not and did not dis- 
cover. 

Fear. It was indeed a purblind dread of this tre- 
mendous Lover that caused the flight. 

1. 49. Note the strong, active sense of "following," a 
proper, but contrary to normal, usage, which offers the 
word in an inactive sense only, v. g., "the following para- 
graph." Compare note on line 14. 

I. 51. Adam and Eve in the garden after their betrayal 
of God's trust, to keep their souls untarnished, found no 
place to shelter them "when they heard the voice of the 
Lord God walking in paradise at the afternoon air" 
(Genesis iii, 8). 

II. 52-60. Foiled of his purpose among the stars, he 
drops back to earth; but remembering his cheated dreams 



58 NOTES 

of winning satisfying love from older folk, he seeks in the 
love of children surcease of his pain. 

1. 52. That after which I strayed. The human heart 
is always consciously or unconsciously seeking the "per- 
fect good," the possession of which will bring it perfect 
well-being and adequate happiness. 

1 53. Thompson's love of children was remarkable. 
Compare especially the ending of his poem 'To my God- 
child": 

"For if in Eden as on earth are we, 
I sure shall keep a younger company: 

Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven." 
Again, from "Sister Songs" (Part First) : 

"Then there came past 
'A Child; like thee, a spring flower; but a flower 
Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring, 
And through the city-streets blown withering 
She passed — brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing! 
And of her own scant pittance did she give, 

That I might eat and live: 
Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive. 

Therefore I kissed in thee 
The heart of Childhood, so divine for me." 

Among the most remarkable of his children's poems are 
"Daisy," "The Poppy," "The Making of Viola," "Ex Ore 
Infantium," the last of which should be known to every 
child. 



NOTES 59 

1. 54, Still. — Though adult human kind has failed to 
stay his quest, there does seem to remain hope of human 
love from children. 

1. 55. Notice the indefinite "something^' and the repeti- 
tion of the same. What it was, the poet seemed not to 
know; and "just as their young eyes grew sudden fair, with 
dawning answers there," just as that intangible "some- 
thing" seemed to be about to be rendered intelligible to 
him, the little children were snatched away — and his quest 
was on him again. 

1. 56. They at least. There is a poignancy in these 
words that bespeak the soul's realization that it is playing 
a losing game that costs it much. 

1. 57. The pathos of this line is splendid, its slow 
movement fitting in harmoniously with the thought. His 
soul-hunger is strong, very strong. 

1. 58. A child's eyes "light up" when it has something 
good and pleasing to tell its comrades or its elders, for 
the eyes are the windows of the soul and the light of its 
joys and the shadows of its sorrows stream through those 
same windows. Compare the delicate poem of Castelli, 
"Vom Auge," two stanzas of which run thus: 

"Es sind zwei kleine Fensterlein 
In einem grossen Haus, 
Da schaut die ganze Welt hinein 
Die ganze Welt heraus. 



60 NOTES 

Auch was der Hausherr denkt und sieht 

Malt er ans Fenster an, 

Dass jeder, der vorueber geht, 

Es deutlich selien kann," 

1. 60. Their angel plucked them. To save them from 
being means, albeit unwittingly, of aid to the soul's 
thievery of itself from God, since innocence must have 
no part in such sacrilege. A kind cruelty both to the 
soul and to the children. Probably Thompson wishes, 
too, to stress his own deeply felt unworthinees and taint- 
edness, as a reason for this sudden withdrawal of the 
innocents. 

Plucked them. Suddenly and swiftly. 

Did Thompson have in mind here the story of Gany- 
mede of pagan mythology, and of Habacuc (Daniel xiv, 
32-38) ? He certainly had in mind the Catholic belief 
in Guardian Angels. It is indeed a commonplace of 
Catholic teaching that each one of us has an Angel to 
guard and protect us, above all in matters touching the 
soul. "See that you despise not one of these little ones: 
for I say to you that their Angels in heaven always see 
the face of my Father, who is in heaven" (St. Matthew 
xviii, 10). What courage and confidence such a doctrine 
gives us, as from our earliest days we are schooled to 
kneel and pray : 

"Angel of God, my guardian dear, 
To whom His love commits me here, 



NOTES 61 

Ever this day be at my side, 

To light, to guard, to rule and guide." 

We may compare the thought expressed by Tennyson 
(Lancelot and Elaine) as Lancelot thinks upon his guilty 
past: 

". . . But if I would not, then may God, 
I pray him, send a sudden Angel down 
To seize me by the hair and bear me far 
And fling me deep in that forgotten mere, 
Among the tumbled fragments of the hills." 

11. 61-110. The soul turns to Nature's children and 
tries to frame all its moods on theirs, hoping to be one 
with them in their "delicate fellowship," only to find 
that the human heart can secure no real sympathy from 
creatures that know "not suffering. Indeed sympathy 
(from the Greek crvixTrdaxeiv — to suffer along with) 
presupposes at least the capacity of suffering like pain. 

11. 61-62. This whole passage is a poetic flight full of 
vast imagery, and one does wrong to strain out laboriously 
a separate reason for every word. The main idea is clear. 
Nature is here pictured as a queen and mother, with the 
earth as her palace, which is walled round with winds. 
She is seated upon a throne or dais, that is canopied over 
by the azure dome of Heaven. Within the palace, i.e., 
upon the earth, are Nature's children, the winds and the 
rain and the clouds, the trees and plants and flowers, 
banqueting and drinking from chalices, which are filled 



62 NOTES 

with the pure light that is spilled abroad by the sun at 
day-break {''lucent-weeping out of the dayspring"). 

Come then. The petulancy and growing irritation of 
the thwarted soul is shown in the abrupt transition and 
appeal. Of all the attempts made by the soul to find 
relief outside of God, this is the most pitiable. (Compare 
note on line 93.) 

Nature's. As many a man before and after him, Thomp- 
son tried to find a fulness of rest and repose in Nature. 
''Few seem to realize that she is alive, has almost as 
many ways as a woman, and is to be lived with, not 
merely looked at." Thus he writes to Mrs. Meynell 
(Life, p. 131). But he himself found that it was quite 
impossible that the void of the human heart should be 
filled by dumb nature. He will tell us this in lines 90-104, 
and speaks of it in "A Renegade Poet and Other Essays" 
(Boston, 1910, pp. 95-96) : "You speak, and you think she 
answers you. It is the echo of your own voice. You think 
you hear t;.o t/.irc.bbin^; of her l.eart, and it is the throb- 
bing of your own. I do not believe that Nature has a 
heart; and I suspect that like many another beauty, she 
has been credited with a heart because of her face." A 
companionship can be found in nature, if it be sought 
aright and restrainedly. So did St. Francis of Assisi 
find joy in Nature and Nature's children, because they 
and he were children of the same Father. So do not 
the Pantheists and atheistic nature-lovers. 

1. 62. Delicate. Notice the word which is repeated in 
line 74. The soul has lost faith in its fellows, and un- 



NOTES 63 

aggressive nature with its verdant meadows, soft turf and 
gentle breezes seemed to hold the balm of Galaad that 
would heal its smarts nor would it ever bruise his soul. 
There seems interwoven with these lines the confession 
that Thompson found the fellowship of men a rasp to 
his sensitive, high-strung soul — men who called him "The 
dreamer," who said that he '"hung his needless head" 
among them. Compare note on line 123. 

I. 66. Vagrant. Here used in its radical, active sense 
of "wandering," "straying." Compare line 14 and note. 

Compare the passage from "Sister Poems" (Part 2nd, 
lines 34, 35, Burns and Gates Edition, 1908) : 

"Sees the palm and tamarind 
Tangle the tresses of a phantom wind." 

II. 68-69. Wind-walled palace. The winds are pic- 
tured as the walls of the palace, the earth being the floor. 

11. 70-72. The meaning seems to be, that in the early 
hours, before the turmoil of life taints the earth, Nature's 
children drink of the dews which come pure and clean 
and sparkling {"luoent-iceeping" = pouring forth light) out 
of the morning's chalice. 

Corot, the famous French painter, used to fold up his 
kit at sunrise and go into the house, saying that beauty 
vanished with the broad daylight. 

1. 75. Though Nature is an open book, which God spreads 
before us all, still there are secrets that one can find out 
only by diligent search. As in any other book, it requires 
time and thought to "read between the lines." 



64 NOTES 

I. 76, Compare Wordsworth's "Michael": 
"Hence he had learned the meaning of all winds, 
Of blasts of every tone; and oftentimes, 
When others heeded not, he heard the south 
Make subterraneous music, like the noise 

Of bagpipers on distant Highland hills." 

II. 78-79. Compare Tennyson (Ancient Sage) : 
"This wealth of waters might but seem to draw 
From yon dark cave, but son, the source is higher, 
Yon summit half a league in air — and higher, 
The cloud that hides it — higher still, the heavens 
Whereby the clouds are moulded, and whereout 
The cloud descended. Force is from the heights." 

Note well that both Tennyson and Thompson are ad- 
mirably accurate on matters scientific, even those techni- 
cally so. These present lines express, as only a poet could, 
the bald fact that the water is drawn up from the ocean 
by the heat of the sun and forms clouds. Tennyson frames 
this briefly: "The clouds themselves are children of the 
sun." Besides comparing Shelley's "Cloud," notice "Clouds" 
by J. B. Tabb: 

"Born of the waters are we. 

Clean of original stain; 
Fresh from the salt of the sea. 

Pure from the marsh and the plain. 

Born of the breezes above, 
Whithersoever they go, 



NOTES 65 

Made in a mystical love, 

Mothers of Rain and of Snow." 

. 1. 79. Spumed of the wild sea-snortings. As though 
the whife clouds were foam thrown off by great sea-horses 
in their wild racing. 

1. 82. Wailful or divine. The outcome of every spiritual 
movement sent by God is joy and peace; and even tliough in 
the beginning there be darkness, this is only the "shade of 
His hand outstretched caressingly." 

Darkness there may be for the soul, even as night falls on 
the body, but both darknesses are meant for respite, not for 
irritation. Gloom from God is always the forerunner of 
dawn ; it is the noon of night that will yield to the cheering 
twilight in which holy souls in this vale of tears abide 
until they stand in the full light of Heaven. Be the dark- 
ness what it may, unless we misread its sending, there 
is nothing wailful about it, save for heroic souls who make 
love's complaint: "Yet more, Lord, yet more." Where 
God is, there are no tears; or, if there be, they touch but 
the surface, as the rainfall and the storm ruffle the ocean's 
breast, while the depths of the soul are at peace with God. 
To every soul-cloud sent by God, there is a silver lining 
seen and felt. Darkness that brings lasting depression is 
not of God. 

Notice the chiastic construction: 

Wailful^-^-.^^^^^,,.-- — divine 
joyed — ""^^""""^---.bereaven. 



66 NOTES 

To Thompson, as we know from his life, there seemed 
a very evident parallel between the seasons of the soul and 
the Church's liturgical seasons. 

I. 84. All too well is it known that with those in grief 
and anxiety the lengthening shadows of eventide are wont 
to bring on depression and anxiety; then, when the morning 
comes, they "Taugh in the morning's eyes," for the material 
light, breaking in on the darkness, all unconsciously causes 
light and joy to be re-lit in their hearts and drives back 
all shadows therefrom. 

II. 85-86. This is a beautiful image of the stars as 
glimmering tapers placed round the day that is dead and 
which by its brightness and glory was like to the holiness 
of grace. Compare "Macbeth," Act. II, Scene 1 : 

"There's husbandry in heaven; 
Their candles are all out." 

1. 86. Dead sanctities. To Thompson, even as to every 
true lover of God, everything in nature was "sacramental" ; 
that is, a sensible sign of some hidden, mysterious power 
behind. Compare Romans i, 20: "For the invisible things 
of Ilim, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, 
being understood by the things that are made." This, too, 
was the way of the Saints, away and beyond all other 
men. To them, it was frankly true, "Turn but a stone 
and start an Angel's wing." The root difficulty in these 
modern days is that "Heaven is not as neighbourly with us 
as with men of old." 

Compare the opening verses of "Orient Ode," wherein 



NOTES 67 

Thompson bases his imagery on the Catholic ritual of Bene- 
diction. 

1. 90. In the revealed story of the creative days, we read 
after each day that preceded man's own coming: "And God 
saw that it was good." Philosophy, too, unless it be 
quite sapped of its truth by ancient or modern Manichaeism, 
which would hold to a double principle of good and evil, 
teaches us that all things are good. So the rain is good, 
and it is sweet too — sweet to the lips of the parched earth, 
the long, dusty road, the thirsting flowers, the cricket with 
its drought-born cry. Only in the tears of man is there 
bitterness, brsught there by his own sad misconstruing of 
life and life's problem. God, by the gifts He had given to 
our first parents, dried our tears before they ever fell. 
Adam's sin unloosed the fountain of tears and swift and 
destructive has been the flowing since then, from the first 
cry of the new-born babe to the tears that wet age's cheeks, 
as it bends over its own grave. "Never morning wore to 
evening, but some heart did break" (In Memoriam, 
Canto vi ) . Compare A. O'Shaughnessy's "Fountain of 
Tears." 

We read the following in the "Autobiography of the 
Little Flower" (p. 100) : "On that day, too, the sun dared 
not shine, and the beautiful blue sky of Italy, hidden by 
dark clouds, mingled its tears with mine." 

1. 91. Sunset-heart. All through this passage Nature is 
personified; and quite naturally the metaphor of heart is 
here introduced. Compare Thompson's "A Corymbus for 
Autumn" : 



68 NOTE IS 

"Day's dying dragon lies drooping his crest, 
Panting red pants into the West." 

Again, the "Ode to the Setting Sun" may be read for 
much similar imagery. 

Though dissimilar, the following from Sidney Lanier's 
"Evening Song" is worthy of note: 

"Now in the sea's red vintage melts the sun, 

As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine, 
And Cleopatra night drinks all." 

1. 93. How many gropers after God have tried to win 
warmth for their heart from nature and nature-study — 
futilely! The cult of nature in lieu of religion has been 
prominent of late, because in most religions there has been 
an adequate destruction of all true notions of the super- 
natural. Emotionalism is taken for religion; and we all 
know, that while nature's beauties can awaken powerful 
emotions in any soul that is not utterly crass, such fleeting 
phases of feeling are not satisfying food for an immortal 
soul. Naturism is a poor substitute. No, not by that, by 
that is eased our human smart! 

1. 94. Even in the Garden of Eden, where there could be 
no "human smart," God saw that it was not good for man 
to be alone; and so made for him a helpmate like unto 
himself (Genesis ii, 18). But once the human heart knew 
pain and sorrow, this need of intelligent, actively sympa- 
thetic and, above all, competent comradeship became inten- 
sified. The Incarnation is the answer to that need. "And 



NOTES 69 

the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us" (St. J<5hn 
i, 14). Thus we have to keep us company, "the man, 
Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy ii, 5) ; as man, keenly and ex- 
perimentally conscious of our weakness; as God, strong to 
ease our "human smarts." Read the striking passage in 
Hebrews ii, 9-18. 

By that, by that. There is deep pathos in this repeti- 
tion. He had taken himself right gladly and most hope- 
fully to these children of a mother whom he thought to 
own. in common with them, and now the increased "human 
smart" assures him that his kinship was mistaken ; nay 
more, these children and he are alien and do not speak the 
same language. Their "delicate fellowship" was, after all, 
a deceptive thing. 

So deep-seated is this need of human companionship in 
our nature, that Aristotle tells us in the "Politics" (Bk. 
I, ch. 2) : "But he who is unable to live in society, or who 
has no need because he is sufficient in himself, must be 
either a beast or a god : he is no part of a state" ( Jowett's 
translation ) . Tiie soul here is neither a beast, for the ob- 
jects of its misdirected love are not sinful; nor is it a god, 
as its incessant craving for created love proves. 

This part of the poem ought to be compared with those 
powerful passages in Holy Scripture in which the absurdity 
of idolatry is shown: Wisdom xii, 10-19, Isaias xliv, 9-20, 
Jeremias x, 3-5. 

1. 95. Even when on cloudy, damp days nature seemed 
best attuned to his sorrow, it gave him no solace. 

1. 98. Their sound is but their stir. The trees, the 



70 NOTES 

flowers, the grass, the water, etc., "speak" to us of God, 
not by the sound they make as they are swayed by the 
winds or tumble over the rocks, but by silently showing 
forth, as imitations and adumbrations, His limitless per- 
fections. This "witnessing" is beautifully described by the 
Psalmist (Psalm xviii, 2-5) : 

"The heavens show forth the glory of God 

And the firmament declareth the work of His hands. 
Day to day uttereth speech, 

And night to night showeth knowledge. 
There are no speeches or languages 

Where their voices are not heard. 
Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth, 

And their words unto the ends of the world." 

It is of this eloquence of nature that the Book of Wis- 
dom speaks (xiii, 1-9) : 

"But all men are vain in whom there is not the knowl- 
edge of God: and who by these good things that are seen, 
could not understand Him that is, neither by attending to 
the works have acknowledged who was the workman: but 
have imagined either the fire, or the wind, or the swift air, 
or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun 
and moon, to be the gods that rule the world. With whose 
beauty, if they, being delighted, took them to be gods, let 
them know how much the Lord of them is more beautiful 
tlian they: for the first author of beautj' made all those 
things. Or if they admired their power and their effects, 
let them understand by them, that He that made them is 
mightier than they: for by the greatness of the beauty and 



NOTES 71 

of the creature, the Creator of them may be seen, so as 
to be known thereby. But yet as to these they are less 
to be blamed. For they perhaps err, seeking God and 
desirous to find Him. For being conversant among His 
works, they search, and they are persuaded that the things 
are good which are seen. But then again they are not to 
be pardoned. For if they were able to know so much as 
to make a judgment of the world, how did they not more 
easily find out the Lord thereof?" 

Silences. These silences could never ease the troubled 
heart. There is only one silence that can heal every human 
smart; and that is the "silence of Death," that ushers us 
into eternity, wherein reverberate unceasingly "the sound- 
less thunders of eternal bliss, breaking on an immaterial 
shore." 

1. 99. Nature was not at fault. If she failed, it was be- 
cause she was asked to nurture a child that was not of 
her kind nor of her own choosing. 

1. 100. Owe. Here in the sense of "own," "claim me 
as her own." 

Despite the fact that he realizes she is not his mother, 
he makes one last despairing appeal. 

1. 101. Nature does drop tlie blue bosom-veil of sky and, 
from the breasts of her tenderness, pour down upon her 
true but irrational children the enlivening rain that fur- 
thers their growth. 

i. 103. Never . . . once. This search has been utterly 
futile. At least man and maid and child began to 
return his love, until God, with cruel kindness, offset 
it. 



72 NOTES 

1. 105. Compare the lines of Homer describing the pur- 
suit of Hector by Achilles (Iliad xxii, 157-161) : "Thereby 
they ran, he flying, he pursuing. Valiant was the flier, but 
far mightier he who fleetly pursued him. For not for 
beast of sacrifice or for an ox-hide were they striving, such 
as are prizes for men's speed of foot, but for the life of 
horse-training Hector was their race." So here the prize is 
the soul of man to be won wholly to God. 

1. 108. Noised. I-e., making noise. 

1. 110. When we content God and have our heart set on 
Him above all, then the little joys and pleasures of earth 
content us, because we seek to draw from creatures only 
the meed of happiness they are meant to give and we use 
them aright, as "food for our journey and not as snares 
for our tarrying" (viaticum itineris, non illecebra man- 
sionis). But when we content not God and have our 
hearts far from Him, then nought contents us, either 
because the foreseen brevity of the happiness, which cre- 
ated things will give, taints even the initial tasting, or 
because, blind to the limited pleasure-content of created 
things, we seek to gain from them what they are ade- 
quately powerless to give, and then find ourselves unsated. 
"God made man after His own image and likeness," where- 
fore He gave him an infinite capacity, and infinite desires, 
such as cannot be satisfied with any finite goods. There- 
fore it is necessary that God alone, who is infinite Good, 
should fill and satisfy that capacity. 

The utter futility of basing our ultimate hopes on any- 
thing of earth is brought out well by Walter Savage 



NOTES 73 

Landor, Imaginary Conversations, Vol. I, Dialogue II, 
wherein -^Esop says to Rhodope: 

"Laodameia died; Helen died; Leda, the beloved of 
Jupiter, went before. It is better to repose ip the earth 
betimes than to sit up late; better, than to cling per- 
tinaciously to what we feel crumbling under us, and to 
protract an inevitable fall. We may enjoy the present 
while we are insensible of infirmity and decay; but the 
present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it ap- 
pertains to what is past and what is to come. There are 
no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave; there are 
no voices, Rhodope, that are not soon mute, however 
tuneful; there is no name, with whatever emphasis of 
passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint 
at last." 

11. 111-154. In these lines we have the awakening of 
the soul progressively portrayed. In lines 111-129 the 
poet pictures his shattered life and the fading of his last 
hope to find comfort at least in his worded work, just as 
every shattered soul clutches with piteous futility at 
some pet nothingness on v/hich to try to stay its beaten 
love. Then in lines 130-154 the truth begins to be realized 
that love for God must stand alone in the soul and that 
it grows and flourishes therein only when the soul has 
been "dunged with rotten death" and by its dead hopes 
rendered fertile to give God unstinted love. 

1. 111. With the prophet Jeremias (xlvii, 6) the soul 
cries out: "O thou sword of God, how long wilt thou not 
be quiet? Go into thy scabbard, rest, and be still," Still 



74 NOTES 

and motionless this sword will be, if only the soul itself 
will allow it to remain so. If it has now learned the 
lesson that God will have it learn — that of whole-hearted 
submission to His will — then it is wrong in awaiting an 
uplifted stroke, unless indeed it prove itself as stiff-necked 
in its rebellion as were the Jews to whom Isaias prophesied 
(ix, 11-13) : "The Lord . . . shall bring on his enemies 
in a crowd: the Syrians from the east and the Philistines 
from the west and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. 
For all this His indignation is not turned away, but His 
hand is stretched out still. And the people are not re- 
turned to Him who hath struck them and have not sought 
after the Lord of Hosts." If the soul will return to Him 
who hath struck it, then it will hear the Psalmist singing, 
"A contrite and humbled heart, God, Thou wilt not 
despise" (Psalm 1, 19). It would seem that Thompson 
portrays the soul as just beginning to realize that it was 
really God's love for it that brought all this disappointment. 
Love's "No" must often cost a deal of pain and it is often 
wisely cruel for love to say it. Compare Hebrews xii, 5-8: 

"My son, neglect not the discipline of the Lord; 

Neither be thou wearied wliilst thou art rebuked by 
Him. 
For whom the Lord loveth, He chastiseth; 

And He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." 

"Persevere under discipline. God dealeth with you as 
with His sons; for what son is there, whom the father 
doth not correct? But if you be without chastisement, 



NOTES 75 

whereof all are made partakers, then are you bastards, and 
not sons." 

1. 112. Bit by bit, the loA'e of all earthly things by which 
he has been trying to encase himself against God's love 
has been "hewn" away. Lusty strokes were needed, for 
they fitted so tightly and so snugly, and were grasped so 
willfully. Compare the verses from "Caelestis Urbs Jeru- 
salem," the Breviary hymn for the Dedication of a Church 
(Translation by Rev. T. J. Campbell, S. J.): 

"Thy gates of purest pearl are opened wide 

To all the world ; for, by no previous worth, 
Are mortals led to thee; but Christ who for them died, 

Hath wrought within their souls a supernatural birth 
That makes them bear the frequent mallet's blow, 

And the slow shaping which the chisel gives. 
By which each stone is fitted to the rest and lives. 

That so beyond the stars the Church of God may grow." 

1, 113. Metaphor from the old wars of lances. Compare 
.Eschylus (Agamemnon, lines 60-68; Morsehead's transla- 
tion) : 

"Even so doth Zeus the jealous lord 
And guardian of the hearth and board, 
Speed Atreus' sons, in vengeful ire, 
'Gainst Paris — sends them forth on fire. 
Her to buy back, in war and blood, 
Whom one did wed but many woo'd! 



76 NOTES 

And many, many, by his will, 

The last embrace of foes sliall feel, 

And many a knee in dust be bowed, 

And splintered spears on shields ring loud, 

Of Trojan and of Greek, before 

That iron bridal-feast be o'er." 

1. 115. Does Thompson mean to tell us that during the 
whole time of his flight from God his soul had been really 
asleep, not alive to Avhat was real around it and to what 
concerned it most? Or does he mean that, after all had 
been stripped from it, he lapsed for a while into a dazed 
condition like unto sleep and, on awakening, first realized 
the stark reality of his witless wanderings? Judging from 
his whole character, the first view seems correct. Com- 
pare Job xvi, 12-15: 

"I that was formerly so wealthy, am all on a sudden broken 
to pieces; 

He hath taken me by my neck, He hath broken me, 

And hath set me up to be His mark. 
He hath compassed me round about with His lances. 

He hath wounded my loins; 
He hath not spared, and hath poured out my bowels on the 
earth. 

He hath torn me with wound upon wound, 
He hath rushed in upon me like a giant." 

1. 116. Slowly gazing. So true to life, when one is 
wakened from deep sleep after harrowing experiences. 



NOTES 77 

11. 117-123. Note and weigh each word in this composite 
picture of life-wreckage and compare with it the Psalmist's 
song (Psalm i, 1-4) : 

"Happy is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of 
the ungodly, 

But his will is in the law of the Lord, 

And on His law he shall meditate day and night. 
And he shall be like a tree which is planted near the run- 
ning waters, 

Which shall bring forth its fruit in due season. 

And his leaf shall not fall off: 
And all whatsoever he shall do, shall prosper. 

Not so the wicked, not so: 
But like the dust which the wind driveth from the face of 
the earth." 

and again. Psalm cxxvii, 1-4: 

"Blessed are all they that fear the Lord: 

That walk in His ways. 
Thou shalt eat the labors of thy hands: 

Blessed art thou and it shall be well with thee. 
Thy wife as a fruitful vine, 

On the sides of thy house. 
Thy children as olive plants, 

Round about thy table. 
Behold, thus shall the man be blessed 

That feareth the Lord." 



78 NOTES 

11. 117-121. The poet here pictures life as a dwelling 
supported by the "pillaring hours" of youth, which in his 
rashness and folly he pulls down upon him, to find him- 
self, all besmirched and bedraggled, standing amid the ruins, 
with youth done for and dead beneath. 

These lines vividly recall the story of Samson (Judges 
xvi, 25-30) : "And rejoicing in their feasts, when they 
had now taken their good cheer, they commanded that 
Samson should be called, and should play before them. 
And being brought out of prison he played before them, 
and they made him stand between two pillars. And he 
said to the lad that guided his steps, 'Suffer me to touch 
the pillars which support the whole house, and let me lean 
upon them, and rest a little.' Now the house was full of 
men and women, and all the princes of the Philistines were 
there. Moreover about three thousand persons of both sexes 
from the roof and the higher part of the house were be- 
holding Samson's play. But he called upon the Lord, say- 
ing, '0 Lord God remember me and restore to me now my 
former strength. my God, that I may revenge myself 
on my enemies, and for the loss of my two eyes I may take 
one revenge.' And laying hold on both the pillars on which 
the house rested, and holding the one with his right hand 
and the other with his left, he said, 'Let me die with the 
Philistines.' And when he had strongly shook the pillars, 
the house fell upon all the princes and the rest of the 
multitude that was there: and he killed many more at his 
death, than he had killed before in his life." 

It is a searing, and therefore great grace from God 



NOTES 79 

to be made to realize the blight that has lain on our past 
years; for then as we kneel in prayer we can humbly cry: 
"I shall recount to Thee all my years in the bitterness of 
my soul. Lord, if man's life be such, and the life of 
my spirit be in such things as these. Thou shalt correct 
me and make me to live" (Isaias xxxviii, 15, 16). Then 
shall the answer ever come back to us: "As it was your 
mind to go astray from God, so when you return again, 
you shall seek Him ten times as much" (Baruch iv, 28). 
1. 117. Rash lustihood of my young powers. Youth is 
strong, yet wasteful of its new-won strength, and it is 
usually only the weight of years that brings a proper poise 
to every act. Many, many men must cry out with sor- 
rowing David (Psalm xxiv, 6, 7) : 

"Remember, O Lord, Thy bowels of compassion, 

And Thy mercies that are from the beginning of the 

world. 
The sins of my youth and my ignorance do not re- 
member. 
According to Thy mercy remember Thou me; 
For Thy goodness' sake, Lord." 

1. 118. Pillaring hours. The time of youth is the time 
of "pillaring hours," i.e., it is then that man must build 
for the future by means of the proper moulding and the 
right education of his "young powers" of mind and body, 
that they may be the "pillars" or supports of his maturer 
life. 

1. 119. Pulled my life upon me. Does Thompson here 



80 NOTES 

have in mind the years of his want in London, when he 
actually did pull his life upon him and quite ruined his 
body by the use of drugs? 

Grimed with smears. I'e., soiled by all that he had 
done amiss. 

1. 120. Carrying out the metaphor of "pillaring hours'' 
and "pulled my life upon me," after the crash of falling 
walls, he finds himself standing amid the dust of the years 
heaped up into a mound of debris. Wreckage is all that 
is left, where a perfect dwelling ought to have been. It 
was while gazing back at death's door over the tangled 
wreckage of his lawless days, that the penitent thief found 
it in his heart to cry out: "Lord, remember me, when Thou 
shalt come into Thy kingdom" (St. Luke xxiii, 42). That 
cry meant much humility; and such must we all have, 
when the failure of years, seeming or real, faces us, else 
no man can tell the sad future of our souls. 

1. 121. Mangled. By his own wilful self-seeking, thus 
spoiling the handiwork of God. 

1. 122. Crackled. Where there should have been the 
freshness of youth, there was nothing but the dryness of 
age, fit fuel for the flames. 

Compare W. H. Mallock ("The Old Order Changeth,'^ 
Vol. I, pp. 135-136, Bentley & Son, London, 1886) : 

"Oh World! whose days like sunlit waters glide. 
Whose music links the midnight with the morrow, 

Who for thy own hast Beauty, Power and Pride, — 
Oh, World, what are thou? And the world replied: 
*A husk of pleasure round a heart of sorrow.' 



NOTES 81 

Oh, Child of God ! thou who hast sought thy way 
Where all this music sounds, this sunlight gleams, 

'Mid Pride and Power and Beauty day by day — 
And what art thou? I heard my own soul say: 
'A wandering sorrow in a world of dreams.' " ^ 

Compare Psalm ci, 4-5, 12: 

"For my days are vanished like smoke. 

And my bones are grown dry like fuel for the fire. 

I am smitten as grass, and my heart is withered 
Because I forgot to eat my bread. 

My da;ys have declined like a shadow, 
And I am withered like grass." 

Indeed the misplaced efforts of his younger days have 
passed away, leaving no lasting good behind, even as 
smoke leaves no least trace of its passing. 

We recall the wonderful picture of life given us in Wis- 
dom V, 9-14: "All those things are passed away like a 
shadow, and like a post that runneth on, and as a ship 
that passeth through the waves, whereof when it is gone 
by, the trace cannot be found, nor the path of its keel in 
the waters; or as when a bird flieth through the air, of 
the passage of which no mark can be found, but only the 
sound of the wings beating the light air, and parting it 
by the force of her flight; she moved her wings and hath 
flown through, and there is no mark found afterwards of 
her way: or as when an arrow is shot at a mark, the 
divided air cometh together again, so that the passage 



82 NOTES 

thereof is not known: so we also being born, forthwith 
ceased to be, and have been able to show no mark of 
virtue, but are consumed in our wickedness. Such things 
as these the sinners said in hell." Compare also Isaias 
xxxviij, 12: "My generation is at an end, and it is rolled 
away from me, as a shepherd's tent. My life is cut off as 
by a weaver: whilst I w^as yet beginning, he cut me off." 
1, 123. Compare the following lines from Thompson (The 
Poppy) : 

"1 hang 'mid men my needless head 

And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread : 

The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper 

Time shall reap, but after the reaper 

The world shall glean of me, me the sleeper! 

Love! I fall into the claws of Time: 
But lasts within a leaved rhyme 
All that the world of me esteems — 
My withered dreams, my withered dreams! 

Thompson's disappointment, and the was sadly disap 
pointed at the lack of appreciation shown him by the 
world, is poignantly described by him in "The Cloud's 
Swan-Song" : 

"A lonely man, oppressed with lonely ills, 

And all the glory fallen from my song. 

Here do I walk among the windy hills; 

The wind and I keep both one monotoning tongue. 



NOTES 83 

Like gray clouds one by one my songs upsoat 
Over my soul's cold peaks; and one by one 
They loose their little rain, and are no more; 
And whether well or ill, to tell me there is none. 

For 'tis an alien tongue, of alien things. 

From all men's care, how miserably apart! 

Even my friends say: 'Of what is this he sings?' 

And barren is my song and barren is my heart." 

1. 125. All the more substantial objects of love and of 
consolatory powers had failed him. Now things most easily 
had — the dream of the dreamer, the music of the lutanist, 
the musings of the poet that are wont to bring a stray ray 
of sunshine into dark hours — none of these offer relief. 

Compare the beautiful passages from the Apocalypse 
xviii, 22, 23: "And the voice of harpers and of musicians, 
and of them that play on the pipe and on the trumpet, 
shall no more be heard at all in thee; and no craftsman 
of any art whatsoever shall be found any more at all in 
thee; and the sound of the mill shall be heard no more at 
all in thee; and the light of the lamp shall shine no more 
at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and the 
bride shall be heard no more at all in thee." Again Jere- 
mias vii, 34: "And I will cause to cease out of the cities 
of Juda and out of the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of 
joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom 
and the voice of the bride: for the land shall be desolate;" 
and Ezechiel xxvi, 13: "And I will make the multitude of 



S4 NOTES 

thy songs to cease and the sound of thy harps shall be 
no more." 

Thus St. John spoke of Babylon and Jeremias of Jeru- 
salem and Ezechiel of Tyre; and thus it is told of every 
heart that makes itself a mart where the things of time 
may come and go, but where God alone is not most wel- 
come. If a man would have peace of soul, he must heed 
the caution of the poet, Archbishop Trench: 

"But keep thou thine a holy solitude; 

For He, who would walk there, would walk alone; 
He who would drink tliere, must be first endued 

With single right to call that stream His own. 
Keep thou thine heart close-fastened, unrevealed, 

A fenced garden and a fountain sealed." 

11. 126-129. Like many another poet, he wove sweet- 
sounding cadences of words around the world and all its 
trinkets, and toyed with it as would a child, and it gave 
him joy for the while and eased his heart a bit; but now, 
when that earth is loaded with heavy griefs, the fragile 
cords can bear no such strain. 

I. 129. Overplussed. le., overcharged, overloaded. 

II. 130-132. Weed. The notion of weed is here shorn 
of all its unpleasant connotation of worthlessness and is 
used because of its prolificness, that makes all other growth 
impossible. (This metaphor, like the title of the poem, is 
a good example of Thompson's felicitous boldness.) 

Amaranthine. An adjective derived from the Greek 
word meaning "deathless." We read in St. Peter (1 Peter 



NOTES 85 

V, 4) : "And when the prince of pastors shall appear, you 
shall receive a never-fading (literally in the Greek 'ama- 
ranthine' ) crown." 

1. 132. From the very start (lines 19-27) the soul per- 
ceived (though its practical application of its perception 
was distorted) that God was to be its "all of love." Now, 
this realization is intensified. Father A. J. Ryan (Noc- 
turne) with wonted simplicity, sings: 

"Nay! list to the voice of the Heavens, 

*One Eternal alone reigns above.' 
Is it true? and all else are but idols, 

So the heart can have only one love? 

Only one, all the rest are but idols, 

That fall from their shrines soon or late, 

When the Love that is Lord of the temple. 
Comes with sceptre and crown to the gate." 

1. 133. The soul begins to see dimly something of God's 
designs; but, unlike St. Paul, unhorsed on the road to 
Damascus, it yields no ready submission. The reason of 
St. Paul's instantaneous yielding was that he really had 
been seeking God and His glory according to his con- 
science. Here the soul is seeking self, not hearkening to 
the words of Our Lord: "If any man come to Me and hate 
not his father and mother and wife and children and 
brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot 
be My disciple" (St. Luke xiv, 26). "If any man will come 
after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and 



86 NOTES 

follow Me" (St. Matthew xvi, 24). This self-denial is the 
forfeit of sanctity, the price of being near God. 

1, 134. Designer infinite. One of the strongest argu- 
ments for tha existence of God is "the argument from 
design." The myriad multiplicity of interacting agents both 
on this tiny earth of ours and especially in the great un- 
measured reaches of the heavens speak loudly of a Designer, 
all-wise in His conceptions and infinite in His power to 
make such conceptions materialize. "The harmony of the 
spheres," the coordination and subordination of nature's 
laws, and the often palpably felt directive force in man's 
own soul-life tell intelligibly that "Behind the dim un- 
known, standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch 
above His own." (N.B. "The archetypal ideas of God," 
which served Him as exemplars of creation, is a familiar 
expression to all conversant with even the rudiments of 
Scholastic Philosophy.) 

1. 135. Metaphor from charcoal sketching, wherein the 
wood is burned and charred befure being fit for use. 

The more experience one has of life, the more one is 
convinced that pain and suffering is a tremendous grace 
from God. "Behold, I have refined thee, but not with 
silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of poverty" 
(Isaias xlviii, 10). It is only from hearts that are bruised, 
that the "sweet odor of Christ" will come forth. "Thy own 
soul a sword shall pierce, that out of many hearts thoughts 
may be revealed" (St. Luke ii, 35). Compare notes on 
lines HI, 133, 143. 

Whether we will or no, the cross awaits us everywhere 



NOTES 87 

in life. As a Kempis says: "The cross, therefore, is always 
ready, and everywhere waits for thee. Thou canst not 
escape it whithersoever thou runnest; for whithersoever 
thou goest, thou carriest thyself with thee, and shalt always 
find thyself. Turn thyself upwards, or turn thyself down- 
wards; turn thyself without or turn thyself within thee, 
and everywhere thou wilt find the cross. ... If thou fling 
away one cross, without doubt thou wilt find another, and 
perhaps a heavier" (Imitation of Christ, Book II, ch. 12). 
Is it not then plain common sense to follow this saintly 
author's advice? — ''Set thyself, then, like a good and faith- 
ful servant of Christ to bear manfully the cross of thy 
Lord, for the love of Him who was crucified for thee. . . . 
For He manifestly exhorts both His disciples that fol- 
lowed Him and all that desire to follow Him to bear the 
cross, saying, 'If anyone will come after Me, let him deny 
himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.' " So, too, 
St. Paul exhorts Timothy ( 2 Timothy ii, 3 ) : "Take your 
share of trials as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." 

11. 1.36-140. There is a wonted Thompsonian profuseness 
of metaphor here, but no confusion. 

1. 136. Spent its wavering shower in the dust. Hence 
uselessly; for the fitful shower merely moistens the dust 
and does not sink into and fructify the earth. 

My freshness. My youth, the time of freshness and 
energy. 

Its wavering shower. The efforts of youth are wont 
to be spasmodic and unstable. "A boy's will is the wind's 
will." 



88 NOTES 

Energy was spent in youth without thought of the time 
of maturer but weaker years. Many a man who has set 
his heart unduly on created things and won them not, 
cries out, as did the Apostles (St. Luke v, 5) : "Master, we 
have labored all the night and have taken nothing." Yet 
it is a tremendous grace to realize this before death; for, 
though it be hard to go to the grave empty-handed of 
earthly riches, it is eternally bad to go there poor in the 
things of God. Compare note on line 123, second quota- 
tion, lines 5-8. 

G. K. Chesterton tells us sententiously that "Hell is en- 
ergy without joy"; and he sums up much theology in those 
few words. 

11. 137-140. This whole metaphor is taken from a broken, 
discarded well over which hangs a gaunt, stark tree from 
whose soughing branches the bleak ^vind spills down into 
the stagnant waters below the drops of rain which seem 
to ooze out of the branches. Every single word should be 
weighed in this picture of personal desolation which ap- 
peals to many as one of the most powerful that has come 
from human pen. The wealth and force of its imagery 
recalls the description of place-desolation in Isaiaa xxxiv, 
8-15 : "For it is the day of vengeance of the Lord, the 
year of recompenses of the judgment of Sion. And the 
streams thereof (i.e., of the land of the enemies) shall be 
turned into pitch, and the ground thereof into brimstone, 
and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. Night 
and day it shall not be quenched, the smoke thereof shall 
go up forever; from generation to generation it shall lie 



N0TE8 89 

waste, none shall pass through it forever and ever. The 
bittern and the ericius shall possess it; the ibis and the 
raven shall dwell in it; and a line shall be stretched out 
upon it, to bring it to nothing, and a plummet, unto desola- 
tion. The nobles thereof shall not be there; they shall call 
rather upon the king, and all the princes thereof shall be 
nothing. And thorns and nettles shall grow up in its 
houses, and the thistle in the fortresses thereof; and it 
shall be the habitation of dragons, and the pasture of 
ostriches. And demons and monsters shall meet, and the 
hairy ones shall cry one to another; there hath the lamia 
lain down, and found rest for herself. There hath the 
ericius had its hole, and brought up its young ones, and 
hath dug round about, and cherished them in the shadow 
thereof; thither a.re the kites gathered together, one to 
another." 

1. 137. Broken fount. Once it was a fountain fair to 
see, holding pure waters of love; but now it is a broken, 
discarded thing; and all that were given leave to draw love 
therefrom have left it in dreary isolation; and all that 
were to be to it the sources of its springs of love have 
sent no waters therein. 

I. 138. Tear-drippings. No flood of tears such as as- 
suage lesser griefs but just those dreadful tears that are 
distilled one by one from the mind in deepest desolation and 
depression. 

II. 139-140. Dank thoughts, sighful branches. The 
poor mind distills "dank" {i.e., gloomy, oppressive) 
thoughts from its "sighful" branches, and these fall into a 



90 NOTES 

heart that has lost all motion, suffering that dreadful 
paralysis that comes from excessive sorrow. We cannot 
but think of Our Lord in the Agony as described in the 
Greek New Testament. It is said that he began XvireTaOal 
(St. Matthew xxvi, 37), to be sad; then adrj/xovelv (St. 
Matthew ibid.), to be heavy and dazed; lastly tKdan^eladat 
(St. Mark xiv, 33), to be aghast and terrified. There is a 
distinct progress in mental effects as He allows the Passion 
and its terrors to grow upon Him. 

N.B. We need not press the word "branches" to find a 
strict parallel in the mind. It merely fills out the picture, 
indicating that there was no quarter of the mind that 
offered anything but sadness and depression. 

1. 142. The pulp so bitter. If in the days of youth and 
new-born manhood, when life is wont to be so sweet and 
every day is as a day in June, I find all so tasteless, nay 
bitter, how will my old age be? The soul has not yet 
learned the worth of the Psalmist's prayer: "Cast me not 
off in the time of old age: when my strength shall fail, 
do not Thou forsake me" (Psalm Ixx, 9) ; nor does it 
realize that God can and does make old age for those who 
liave always loved Him — yes, and even for those who 
learned late to love Him — a time of gentle, peaceful waiting 
for the Bridegroom's coming. The last few hours of even 
the penitent thief were such. 

We might recall St. Luke (xxiii, 31): "For if in the 
green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the 
dry?" 

The soul is now absolutely disconsolate, for all objects of 
love have been taken from it. 



NOTES 91 

'*The night has a thousand eyes, 

And the day but one; 
Yet the light of the bright world dies 

With the dying sun. 

The mind has a thousand eyes, 

And the heart but one; 
Yet the light of a whole life dies 

When love is done." 

Life seems utterly blank now. and there seems to lie 
athwart life's path a future darker than the shadowed 
past. 

1. 143. Under the /ept^ated dosages of disappointment, 
sorrow, and misfortune, the soul's vision is being cleared, 
even as the blind man's eyes were given light through the 
anointing with clay and spittle ( St. John ix, 6 ) . 

It begins to see the healing and sanctifying value of all 
that the human heart holds hard, it begins to realize the 
old sayings, "per aspera, ad astra," "per crucem ad lu- 
cem." The Greeks, too, had the proverb : leap errades, 
eixaSes (if you suffer, you learn). Virgil makes Dido say 
(/Eneid, Bk. I, line 630) : "Non ignara mali miseris suc- 
currere disco" ("Nor yet untaught in sorrow's school, I 
learn to succor grieving hearts"). Isaias tells us (xxviii, 
19) : "Vexation alone shall make you understand what you 
hear." And with unmistakable terms Christ Our Lord 
says: "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless the grain of 
wheat, falling into the ground, die, itself remaineth alone. 
But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (St. John xii, 
24, 25). 



92 NOTES 

God very kindly keeps the hidden freight of the future 
away from our eyes; yet, from time to time, as we absorb 
experiences, it becomes clearer and clearer to us that 
the way of progress in this vale of tears is the way of the 
cross. God indeed has a surgery for the soul more healing 
than ever was or can be the surgery of the body — yes, and 
far more necessary. Father Ryan sings (A Thought) : 

"It is a truth beyond our ken — 
And yet a truth that all may read — 

It is with roses as with men. 

The sweetest hearts are those that bleed. 

The flower that Bethlehem saw bloom 

Out of a heart all full of grace. 
Gave never forth its full perfume 

Until the cross became its vase." 

The old dramatist ^schylus (Agamemnon, lines 176-178, 
Morsehead's translation) tells us: 

" ^Tis Zeus alone who shows the perfect way 

Of knowledge: He hath ruled, 
Men shall learn wisdom, by affliction schooled." 

Joyce Kilmer (Poets) sings so beautifully: 

"Light songs we breathe that perish with our breath 
Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod. 

They shall not live who have not tasted death. 
They only sing who are struck dumb by God." 



NOTES 93 

Compare notes on lines 111, 133, 135. 

I. 145. To second the convictions that are beginning to 
take form in his mind, a vision is given him from Eternity; 
and "Eternity" being the view-point, truth is necessarily 
implied. Notice how fitly the whole scene is described: 
"battlements of Eternity" — for he has been fighting against 
what is of God and now the unshakable walls are seen; the 
"mists" in which Time confounds everything because of 
our shortened purview are "shaken" for a short "space" by 
the magic trumpet. The soul catches a faint, dim, yet 
convincing view both of the turrets and of the summoner, 
and then the mists slowly fold all out of sight again. 

II. 148-154. Different interpretations have been given to 
these lines: 

i. 11. 148-151 picture Death. 11. 152-154 are an address 
to God. The adjectives "gloomy," "purpureal," "cypress- 
crowned" are claimed to be more appropriate if Death be 
meant, but somewhat difficult of explanation if God be 
intended. Nor is the transition too abrupt, as the recogni- 
tion of Death in line 150 makes the soul reflect and turn 
to God with a very natural question. Lastly the personal 
pronouns in lines 148-151 are spelled without capitals, 
which Thompson invariably uses when referring to God. 

ii. The lines represent God throughout. Our Lord is 
pictured in "glooming robes purpureal": for He trod the 
wine-press of Golgotha, coming "from Edom, with dyed 
garments from Bosra, the beautiful one in His robe" 
(Isaias Ixiii, 1), and He is "cypress-crowned," for His 
crown, with which He was crowned conqueror of the world, 



94 liOTES 

was the crown of death. Compare "laurel-crowned" for 
crowned with victory. 

11. 152-154. Within the answer to this question would 
be contained the whole doctrine of mortification, so grossly 
misunderstood by many. Mortification is not a fetish but 
a ministering angel and, as the soul's spiritual vision is 
clarified, it sees that mortification, i.e., the making dead 
(Latin mortuum and facere), the killing of all that is dis- 
ordered in our lives, is necessary, for three reasons : 

i. That we may never be led astray by our passions. 
Right psychology teaches us that sense-perceptions precede 
intellectual and volitional movements ; and, if they are 
very vehement, are prone to hurry the latter into action 
without proper regard for the laws of God. To have per- 
fectly under our control at all times and in all places ail 
of our sense-activities, a deal of self-denial, i.e., mortifica- 
tion, is required. If we have not this control we are the 
playthings of our own passions and passing moods, and 
from our own hearts is wrung, sooner or later, the bitter 
cry of the old poet: 

"I know my soul hath power to know all things, 

Yet is she blind and ignorant in all. 
I know I'm one of nature's little kings. 

Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall. 
I know my life's a pain and but a span, 

I knov/ my sense is mocked in everything, 
And to conclude I know myself a man, 

Which is a proud and yet a wretched thing." 



NOTES 95 

Thompson had quite a singular grasp of the doctrine of 
mortification and tlie necessity of denying one's self. He 
puts it tersely in "Any Saint" : 

"Compost of Heaven and mire. 
Slow foot and swift desire! 

Lo, 
To have yes, choose no; 

Gird and thou shalt unbind; 
Seek not and thou shalt find; 
To eat 
Deny thy meat; 

And thou shalt be fulfilled 
With all sweet things unwilled." 

Recall Tennyson (In Memoriam) : 

"That men may rise on stepping-stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things." 

ii. That we may make atonement for past misuse of 
these same faculties, when by them we violated God's law, 
even in little things. 

iii. That we may not be "delicate soldiers of a thorn- 
crowned King," for "love either finds or makes alike"; and 
so "Those, who seriously follow Christ our Lord, love and 
earnestly desire ... to be clothed with the same garment 
and with the livery of their Lord for His love and rev- 
erence" (St. Ignatius of Loyola). It was an over-mastering 
love of Christ that made so many Saints practice unwonted 



96 NOTES 

mortifications and could find them ever saying with the 
poet-priest of the South: 

"I tasted all the sweets of sacrifice, 
I kissed my cross a thousand times a day 
I hung and bled upon it in my dreams, 
I lived on it — I loved it to the last." 

It was such desire as this, to be like her suffering Lord, 
that made a St. Theresa plead, "Lord, let me suffer or let 
me die." 

Man's heart or life. Man's heart is "dunged with rotten 
death" when it feels upon it the weight of the drooping and 
dead objects of its earthly love; and man's life yields God 
most harvest then only, when it has passed through ordeals 
that bring it well within the shadow of the Cross. 

I. 154. Robert Southwell, S. J., in his "St. Peter's Cora- 
plaint," has a quaint line: 

"Did Christ manure thy heart to breed Him briers?" 

II. 155-176. At length the fleeing soul is overtaken and 
with words that humble yet encourage, strike to the ground 
and yet uplift, it is told its real value and whom alone it 
can find to give such a worthless thing abiding love. New 
hope, too, is lighted up within when it is known that all 
its faded dreams will be found quite fulfilled "at home." 

1. 156. Comes on at hand the bruit. Note how subtly 
the poet conveys the idea of lessening distance between 
giant Pursuer and pursued. It is only now that the sound 
of the "following Feet" is near enough to be heard, and they 



NOTES »7 

are the feet of a "ti emendous Lover"; and so the giant's 
footfall is indeed a bruit or great noise. 

1. 157. As the sea when it bursts beneath the lashing of a 
vast storm seems to be roaring above and below and around 
those in the storm-tossed bark, thus the voice of God now 
so surrounds the soul that there is no avenue of escape. 
We hear in this line the refrain of the Psalmist (Psalm 
xli, 8-9, translation by Rev. J. M'Swiney, S. J.) : 

"Deep to deep is calling, at the noise of Thy cataracts; 
All Thy breakers and Thy waves are gone over me." 

and again (Psalm xcii, 3, 4) : 

"The floods have lifted up, O Lord, 
The floods have lifted up their voice: 

The floods have lifted up their waves, 

With the noise of many waters. 

Wonderful are the surges of the sea: 

Wonderful is the Lord on high." 

Thompson must surely have had in mind the words of St. 
John (Apocalypse i, 15) : "And His voice as the sound of 
many waters." 

1. 158. Note the progressive reproof in the words of God. 
First, a gentle correction which, however, brings hope ( 156- 
160) ; then by degrees, with a tenderness known only to 
pierced hands, He lays bare the wounds of the soul and 
shows with healing pitilessness the utter unworthiness of 
the soul (161-170). This indeed must be realized, if we 
are to be saved from our own follies. Then, again, a cor^ 



98 NOTES 

rection of wrong impressions awakening old hopes (171- 
175). Finally the loving invitation to let bygones be by- 
gones and to come to Him (176). 

1. 159. Compare Isaias xxx, 14: "And it shall be broken 
small, as the potter's vessel is broken all to pieces with 
mighty breaking, and there shall not a shard be found of 
the pieces thereof, whereon a little fire may be carried from 
the hearth, or a little water be drawn out of the pit." 

1. 161. A powerful line with a weight of adjectives that 
sink into the very heart of man. 

Strange. Weirdly strange heart of man, who is the child 
of God, yet runs away lest it have no love except that of 
a Father who so loves it, that He gave His only Son as 
ransom for its sins and cried out to it: "Can a woman 
forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her 
womb? And if she should forget, yet will I not forget thee. 
Behold I have graven thee in My hands" (Isaias xlix, 
15, 16). 

Piteous. Worthy of all pity, because its running away is 
a foolish bit of childish insubordination, all to its own hurt. 
"Be astounded, O ye heavens, at this, and ye gates thereof 
be very desolate, saith the Lord. For My people have done 
two evils. They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living 
water, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cis- 
terns, that can hold no water" (Jeremias ii, 12, 13). 

Futile. Because, if God is determined to win thy love, 
"it is hard for thee to kick against the goad" (Acts ix, 5). 
It is a rebellion doomed from the start. 

1. 164. There is only one human love which stands not 



NOTES 99 

on human meriting and that is the love of parent for child. 
This love is based and natively modeled on our heavenly 
Father's love. All other loves, the love of man and woman, 
of friend and friend, is given precisely because of human 
excellence and human meriting. Supernatural love, how- 
ever, being founded on the goodness of God and the eternal 
worth of every soul, heaven-destined like ourselves, sinful 
though it may now be, reaches beyond and above all this, 
remaining true when even the love of parent fails. Compare 
St. Matthew, v, 43-48. 

11. 165-168. Any man who realizes intimately that these 
lines are true of him, can kneel and cry out aright with the 
Psalmist: "Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, Lord" 
(Psalm cxxix, 1). A vivid realization of this humiliating 
truth makes Saints, men and women to whom self is nought. 
This is the unraveler of the mystery of self-hatred, so pres- 
ent in the lives of the Saints. At least a lesser realization 
is necessary to every man who has at heart the salvation 
of his soul. For, as in the beginning, God created the 
heavens and the earth out of nothingness, so in the spiritual 
life, God will not build and form and fashion save where 
there is the nothingness of self-esteem. 

1. 166. Clotted. No longer is man the untainted, un- 
cursed clay, into which God breathed the breath of life; for 
entangling passions have made him a sorry thing. The 
seven primal sources of sin have woven his life, individual 
and social, into many a knotted skein. The intellect, im- 
bued with prejudices, leads the will astray; the will, 
plunging headlong after sensible delights, darkens the in- 



100 NOTES ' 

tellect; and against the control of both intellect and will 
rise the rebellious senses. Truly if peace be "the tranquil 
lity of order," there rarely is full peace found in man this 
side of the grave. 

Clay. As Ash Wednesday's "Remember, man, that thou 
art dust and unto dust thou shalt return," so this line, 
with one majestic sweep, carries us back to man's lowliest 
beginning. Compare Thompson's similar expressions found 
in "Any Saint": 

"Great arm-fellow of God! 
To the ancestral clod 

Kin 
And to cherubin; 

Bread predilectedly 

0' the worm and Deity! 

Hark, 
God's clay-sealed Ark." 



'Compost of Heaven and mire'' 



"Rise; for Heaven hath no frown 
When thou to thee pluck'st down, 
Strong clod! 
The neck of God." 

Dingiest clot. Every soul can say this, for even though 
its actual sins have not been as heinous as these of others, 
still its slack correspondence with God's graces, especially 
when these have come with unwonted largess into its life, 



NOTES 101 

makes it say, in all truth, that it is the most ungrateful 
of mortals, the sorriest specimen of all. 

11. 167-168. Indeed, to know how little worthy we are of 
love, we should have to know what sin is. Yet this no man 
can know in its entirety; for to evaluate sin exactly, man 
would have to possess complete knowledge of God whom 
sin offends. 

1. 169. Ignoble. Surely man is ignoble: 

i. In his primeval origin. — "And the Lord God formed 
man of the slime of the earth" (Genesis ii, 7). 

ii. In his present nature. — "I find then a law, that when 
I have a will to do good, evil is present within me. For 
I am delighted with the law of God according to the inward 
man : but I see another law in my members, fighting against 
the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin, 
that is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, who 
shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Romans 
vii, 21-24). 

iii. By the ending of his body. — "I have said to rotten- 
ness: Thou art my father; to worms: My mother and my 
sister" (Job. xviii, 14). 

iv. By his ingratitude to God. — Most say "Thank you" 
to God far fewer times than they would in decency dare 
say it to a human benefactor. "Were not ten made clean? 
Where are the nine?" (St. Luke xvii, 17). 

V. Above all in his sin. — "Yet I planted thee a chosen 
vineyard, all true seed: how then art thou turned unto Me 
into that which is good for nothing, strange vineyard?" 
( Jeremias ii, 21 ) . 

In times of self-forgetfulness we seem to ourselves to 



102 NOTES 

be worth a deal and we preen our feathers and strut before 
the world; but when we sit alone and thinkingly ponder 
the lapsed years, what is the autobiography we see written 
with incessant pen? "I will recount to thee all my years 
in the bitterness of my soul" (Isaias xxxviii, 15). When 
we finish the count, are we anxious to find a publisher for 
our autobiography ; and were it published, would any of its 
readers ever find it in them to love us? Yet we crave to 
talk out our hearts. It was to meet this deep psychological 
craving that Our Lord deigned to institute the confes- 
sional, wherein we can lay bare our inmost souls and know 
that our secret will never be told, and ourselves never 
valued the less for the telling of our own sad tale. 

I. 170. The soul must be made to realize that "to Thee is 
the poor man left: Thou wilt be a helper to the orphan" 
(Psalm ix, 14). Indeed it is only God who will accept the 
gift of a shattered life, and welcome a public Magdalen and 
promise heaven to a dying thief. Truly "Thou art my God, 
for Thou hast nj need of my goods" (Psalm xv, 2), "for 
Thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none of the 
things which Thou hast made: for Thou didst not appoint 
or make anything, hating it. . . . But Thou sparest all, be- 
cause they are Thine, Lord, who lovest souls" (Wisdom 
xi,25, 27). 

II. 171-176. Note the exquisite touch in these lines. We 
are led to recall the action of a fond mother who takes 
away the playthings of her child, just that she may have the 
pleasure of having it seek them from her again. 

Compare the following from Joyce Kilmer (Pennies) : 



NOTES 103 

**So unto men 

Doth God, depriving that He maj; bestow. 

Fame, health, and money go, 

But that they may, new found, be newly sweet. 

Yea, at His feet 

Sit, waiting us, to their concealment bid, 

All they, our lovers, whom His love hath hid." 

All — stored — home. The words are well chosen to in- 
sinuate the length of the pursuit and the multiplicity of the 
objects taken. Note again the ringing pathos of the lines. 

The soul must realize the reason of God's action which 
has seemed to it to be a baneful persecution. There are 
few words that insinuate so well the purpose God has in 
afflicting a soul as the words of Isaias (i, 5) : "For what 
shall I strike you any more, you that increase transgres- 
sions?" God is a divine surgeon who cuts to heal. When 
the cutting serves but to increase the malady, He desists. 

Compare Joel ii, 2.5, 26: "And I will restore to you the 
years which the locust, and the bruchus, and the mildew, 
and the palmerv/orm have eaten . . . and you shall eat in 
plenty and shall be filled: and you shall praise the name 
of the Lord your God, who hath done wonders with you, 
and My people shall not be confounded forever." Also the 
following from Psalm Ixxxviii, 31-34: 

"And if his children forsake My law, 

And walk not in My judgments; 
If they profane My justices. 

And keep not my commandments; 



104 NOTES 

I will visit their iniquities with a rod, 

And their *ins with stripes; 
But My mercy I will not take away from him, 

Nor will I suffer My truth to fail." 

1. 173. Note emphatic position of "Just." 

Again, are we pressing words too far, if we note that 
it is "in My arms" and not "from" them that the lost treas- 
ures must be sought? Like a little child, after having 
strayed from her, nestles safely in its mother's arms, and 
finds its playthings all about it, so now the soul, without 
leaving God's embrace, will find all the former objects of 
its love brought near it. 

1. 174. A pitiable commentary on a man is to say, "He 
is an overgrown child" ; and yet every strayer from God is 
such. This likening man to a child and his waywardness 
to a child'^ wilfulness recalls Coventry Patmore's beautiful 
lines from "The Toys": 

"Ah! when at last we lie with tranced breath, 

Not vexing Thee in death. 

And Thou rememberest of what toys 

We made our joys. 

How weakly understood 

Thy great commanded good, 

Then, fatherly not less 

Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay, 

Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say, 

'I will be sorry for their childishness.' " 



NOTES 105 

Before Patmore, the Royal Psalmist sang (Psalm cii, 
12-14) : 

"As far as the east is from the west, 

So far hath He removed our iniquities from us. 

As a father hath compassion on his children, 

So hath the Lord compassion on them that fear Him. 

For He knoweth our frame; 

He remembereth that we are dust." 

1. 175. At home. These words alone ought to win any 
soul to God; and they do, when fully grasped. With them 
God would reawaken the long slumbering echoes in the 
exile's soul and rouse anew that homesickness for heaven 
that every man feels in his heart. Truly, if that is home, 
"where our feet may leave, but not our hearts," then the 
infinite homesickness of the human heart amid all the mani- 
fold joys of life, infallibly tells of a home beyond the grave. 
The realization of this makes us call our burying-ground a 
"cemetery," i.e., "sleeping-place" whence we are to awaken 
and arise. This knowledge makes every Christian cry out 
with St. Paul: "0 death, where is thy victory? death, 
where is thy sting?" (1 Corinthians xv, 55). To the pagans, 
of old and of to-day, who misread this yearning of the 
heart as a desire to stay and find at length full light where 
shadows always fall, death is a bitter, painful thing, that 
will snuff out even that meed of happiness we sometimes 
gain this side the grave. Dying is not to them what it was 
to the old Germans — Heimgang, a "going home." 

1. 176. Throughout these words there is no chiding, for 



lOG NOTES 

this will come from the heart itself, when it has learned to 
love God more. "'Thy own wickedness shall reprove thee, 
and thy apostasy shall rebuke thee. Know thou that it 
is an evil and a bitter thing for thee to have left the Lord 
thy God" (Jeremias ii, 19). 

Rise. Compare line 113, "And smitten me to ray knee." 
Hence the need of rising. 

Clasp my hand. The eager welcome of the surrendering 
soul by Our Lord is beautifully pictured in these words. 
Compare Isaias xliii, 1 : "And now thus saith the Lord that 
created thee, Jacob, and formed thee, O Israel: Fear not, 
for I have redeemed thee, and called thee by thy name: 
thou art Mine." 

11. 177-182. With utter delicacy the poet describes the 
meeting in a few brief lines and draws the curtain, that 
words might not mar, with their vulgar noise, the sacred- 
ness of that recognition. 

1. 177. The smooth rhythm of these lines audibly conveys 
the calm and peace of the surrendered soul. 

1. 178. Is my gloom. The words of God have been work- 
ing silently yet powerfully, and here a change of viewpoint 
is evidenced in the soul; and this, a change of viewpoint, 
is so markedly the beginning of repentance, that the early 
Greek theologians called the whole repentive process "a 
change of mind" — txtravoia ( = an after or later percep- 
tion). Repentance is indeed a rectifying of a false judg- 
ment that a sinful act was worth the while committing. 
Because of this mental rectification and readjustment, there 
inevitably comes the resolve not to sin again. 



NOTES 107 

1. 179. The soul begins to hear and understand the call of 
God: "Why seek you the living among the dead?" (St. 
Luke xxiv, 5). It has tried to find its heart's ease there 
where it could not be found, feeding its immortal desires on 
passing trifles, which are, like the Dead Sea fruit, fair to 
behold but crumbling into ashes at the very touch. 

With the thought of protecting shade we may compare 
Isaias xlix, 2: "And He hath made my mouth like a sharp 
sword: in the shadow of His hand He hath protected me, 
and hath made me a chosen arrow: in His quiver He hath 
hidden me." Indeed whatever darkness comes from God is 
one of protection, for "God is light and in Him there is 
no darkness" (1 John i, 5). 

Father Tabb (Eclipse) presents a similar idea: 

"Fear not : the planet that bedims 

The moon's distorted face, 
Itself through cloudless ether swims 

The Sea of Space; 

And earthward many a distant wing 
Of spirits in the light 



ui spirits m tne iignt 
A salutary shade may fling 
To mark its flight." 



1. 180. Fondest. — How strangely must this word fall on 
the erring soul! How has it been fond towards God? Yet 
it is by this word that God seems to eagerly second the 
slightest efforts of the soul. Truly the human soul is 
"fond." Its very capacity for love led its feet astray. 

Blindest. AH wandering from God, all sin is indeed piti- 



1 U8 NOTES 

able blindness. "Father forgive them for they know not 
what they do." Blind, indeed, is the soul since it cannot 
understand the prayer of an Augustine who had himself 
wandered far from God: "0 Lord Thou hast made us for 
Thyself and our heart is restless till it rests in Thee" 
(Confessions Bk. I, ch. 1). Yes, and it has forgotten the 
hymn that awakened echoes in its child's heart: 

"Thou alone canst fill it. 

Little though it be; 
For Thou, Lord, hast made it, 

All alone for Thee." 

The soul must see that "destruction is thy own, Israel ; 
thy help is only in Me" (Osee xiii, 9). "I am, I am the 
Lord: and there is no saviour besides Me" (Isaias xliii, 11). 

Weakest. How eager is the Lover of souls to excuse! 
The "Little Flower" said that her heavenly Lover knew no 
mathematics, for He never adds our faults together once 
we are sorry for them. Here Our Lord shows Himself a 
true priest, "for every high priest, being selected from 
among men ... is capable of bearing gently with the igno- 
rant and the erring, since he is himself beset with weak- 
ness" ( Hebrews V, 1-2). 

This eager kindliness of God to find good in the soul is 
beautifully expressed by Robert Browning {The Ring and 
the Book) : 

" 'Twas a thief said the last kind word to Christ, 
Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft." 



:^0TE8 109 

1. 182. Even as the prodigal was welcomed by his ex- 
pectant father, so the vagrant soul, that has wasted its sub- 
stance on the fruitless love of creatures, is greeted by God 
its Father and brought back home, and all the Angels of 
God are glad, for they know that their "brother was dead 
and is come to life again; he was lost and is found" (St. 
Luke XV, 32 ) . Even as God bends down to greet the way- 
ward culprit, it hears the cheering words: "Be of good 
comfort, my children .... for as it was your mind to go 
astray from God; so when you return again you shall seek 
Him ten times as much" (Baruch iv, 27-28). "Therefore 
at the least from this time call to Me: Thou art my Father" 
(Jeremias iii, 4). 



As the soul gives in at length to God and yields an un- 
conditional surrender then "the peace of God which sur- 
passeth all understanding" (Philippians iv, 7) enters into 
it and such joy comes, too, that the grateful soul breaks out 
into the song that Judith sang (Judith xvi, 16-17) : 

"0 Adonai, Lord, great art Thou, 
And glorious in Thy power, 
And no one can overcome Thee. 

Let all Thy creatures serve Thee: 

Because Thou hast spoken, and they were made: 
Thou didst send forth Thy spirit, and they were created, 
And tliere is no one that can resist Thy voice." 

No longer is it "sore adread, lest having Him, it must 
have nought beside," for it has learned that He and He 



110 NOTES 

alone, as "Goodness without limit," can satiate every crav- 
ing of its being. Its one prayer now is the prayer of 
Loyola's soldier-saint: "Only Thy love and grace on me 
bestow, possessing these, all riches I forego." If there be 
aught of regret that it feels, it is that it has sadly squan- 
dered its love and surrendered too late and too reluctantly 
to God. "0 Lord, our God, other lords besides Thee have 
had dominion over us, only in Thee let us remember Thy 
Name" (Isaias xxvi, 13), "Thou art great, Lord, and 
Thy kingdom is unto all ages: for Thou scourgest, and 
Thou savest: Thou leadest down to hell and bringest up 
again, and there is none that can escape Thy hand" (Tobias 
xiii, 1-2). 



The pursuit is over now, but rest does not ensue. At once 
a new race is begun, but Our Lord is now at the side of 
the soul as it runs its course heavenwards. Nor is the 
race a slack one. "There is need of running, and of run- 
ning vehemently. He that runneth a race, seeth none of 
those that meet him; whether he be passing through 
meadows, or through dry places: he that runneth, looketh 
not at the spectator, but at the prize. . . . He is occupied 
in one thing alone, in running, in gaining the prize. He 
tliat runneth never standeth still, since even if he slacken a 
little, he has lost the whole. He that runneth, not only 
slackens nothing before the end, but then even especially 
straineth his speed" (St. John Chrysostom, Homily vii, on 
the Epistle to the Hebrews). Yet there is the greatest joy 
and satisfaction in this race, for the soul now has caught 



NOTES 111 

the rich meaning of the words wherein St. Paul calls to 
us all, after that he has told of the faithful Saints of old: 
"And therefore we also having so great a cloud of witnesses 
over our heads, laying aside every weight and sin which 
surrounds us, let us run with steadfastness the race pro- 
posed to us, looking on Jesus, the author and finisher of 
faith" (Hebrews xii, 1-2). 

Thus side by side the soul and Our Lord will go forward 
in the race and there will be no anxiety "for though I 
should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear 
no evil, for Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff, they 
have comforted me" (Psalm xxii, 4). 

Nay rather will the soul become so conscious of His love, 
that it will cry out : 

"I love, and I have felt against my heart 
The throbbing of my Lover's Heart; it was — 
Sh.all trembling lips dare tell? 
It was the Heart of God. 
Of God, who rayed with gleaming glory, rules 
In the bright heavens, yet finds His chiefest joy 
To be with little man, 
A-wandering in this vale. 
The fair intelligences all-amazed 
Behold that glory wrapped in fleshly veil 
Descending to this heir 
Of guilt and wretchedness, 
And, healing with His sacred Hands the wounds 
Of the poor mangled worm; and to all worlds 
Shouting his joy, should one 



112 NOTES 

Poor sinner love Him back. 
I saw Him through the deep abysmal gloom 
Draw near me; and I heard His gentle plaint: 

"Why dost thou shrink and hide 

From my pursuing love?" 
Closer He drew and closer yet, the while 
The radiance of His beauty shone more sweet, 

Till my heart burned within, 

To burn for evermore. 
I love, and I have felt against my heart 
The throbbing of my Lover's Heart; it was — 

I boldly dare proclaim — 

It was the Heart of God, 
Whom I have seen, and known; Who loves me, 

Whom I love." 

(Silvio Pellico, Dio Amore) 

If we but journey on by His side and forsake Him not 
there will be no need of the prayer: "Cast me not off in 
the time of old age: when my strength shall fail, do not 
Thou forsake me" (Psalm Ixx, 9) ; for we shall go on 
and on together through this valley of tears with the light 
of another world in our eyes and the music of Angels' 
songs within our hearts. There will be days of gloom and 
trial, days when poor mortal flesh would fain take rest; 
but we shall travel swiftly on despite it all. 

"Coward, wayward and weak, 

I change with the changing sky. 
One day eager and brave 



NOTES 113 

The next not caring to try, 
But He never gives in, and we two shall win, 
Jesus and I." 

Thus will He lead us on, "o'er moor and fen, o'er crag 
and torrent, 'til the night is gone," "until the day dawn 
and the day-star arise" (2 Peter i, 19), and we come 
"home" to find our lost trinkets stored in our Father's 
house. "0 kingdom of eternal blessedness! where youth 
never groweth old, where beauty never waneth, nor love 
groweth cold, where health knows no sickness, where joy 
never decreaseth, where life hath no end" (St. Augustine, 
Soliloquy, ch. 36). "Even to your old age I am the same, 
and to your gray hairs I will carry you; I have made you 
and I will bear; I will carry and I will save (Isaias 
xlvi, 4). Therein lies the secret of it all, the comradeship 
of my changeless Friend. 










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